Conference Agenda

While public concern about climate change is growing, individuals often face information frictions and psychological barriers to pro-environmental behavior. In this study, we design and test an edutainment intervention that aims at promoting more sustainable food consumption through a serious video game. Different game versions either link player actions to visual impacts on the in-game environment or to social feedback through interactions with non-player characters, or both.

To evaluate the effects on real-life attitudes, knowledge, and behavior, we conduct an online survey experiment (n = 4,034 UK adults) that embeds an incentivised grocery shopping task. Compared to subjects who played a control version without educational content, treated subjects purchase food products that are around 20% more environmentally sustainable immediately after playing the game. In a follow-up survey several weeks later, effects are still strongly significant at around 8-10%. These behavioral changes are driven both by improved knowledge about environmental impacts of food as well as an increase in stated preferences toward more sustainable food consumption. Effects are particularly persistent among individuals with lower baseline environmental attitudes.

Empirical analyses based on survey data that ignore (in-)attentiveness of respondents can lead to biased and unreliable results. In this paper, we demonstrate the attenuation bias caused by inattentiveness and show that estimated parameters in analyses based online survey data are systematically re-weighted towards the characteristics of attentive respondents. We then experimentally examine the degree of bias and explore how attentiveness can be improved through different preventive interventions. Based on data from a nationally representative sample of more than 3,900 adult citizens in Germany, we show that inattentiveness is widespread, correlates with individual characteristics and preferences, and has important consequences for empirical results on pro-environmental behavior. In a pre-registered randomized controlled trial, we find that commonly used interventions, such as information about social norms, threats, or moral appeals, fail to correct the attenuation and re-weighting bias. We suggest a re-sampling alternative and conclude by discussing some implications of our findings for survey-based empirical research.

Younger cohorts express strong support for environmental sustainability, yet how these preferences are valued in the labour market remains poorly understood. This paper estimates young workers’ willingness to pay for green job attributes and examines whether such valuations are driven by self-interested risk considerations or by prosocial preferences. We implement a discrete choice experiment based on hypothetical job offers administered to a nationally representative sample of 2,008 individuals aged 18–30 in Italy. We find that workers at the beginning of their careers are willing to forego between 2 and 8 per cent of their monthly wage to obtain a green job attribute, a magnitude comparable to that of standard job amenities. Preference heterogeneity reveals that this willingness to pay is primarily explained by prosocial motivations rather than risk aversion. These findings suggest that firms offering green jobs enjoy greater overall labour-market attractiveness and, in particular, a stronger ability to attract prosocial workers.

Behavioural interventions increasingly complement energy labels, but social comparison may backfire when the targeted behaviour is uncommon. We study how framing social comparison affects energy-efficient appliance choice in an online experiment with 1,828 Irish consumers. Participants completed a retail-style shopping task and a discrete choice experiment under Control, a descriptive norm (“Direct Comparison”), or a reframed message (“Positive Deviance”). We leverage baseline heterogeneity across categories: washing machines exhibit high prevalence of efficient choices, whereas fridge-freezers do not. Direct Comparison increases efficiency when efficient choices are already common, but in low-prevalence markets it polarises decisions across energy labels, increasing selection of both the least and the most efficient products. Positive Deviance produces consistent upward shifts in energy efficiency and increases willingness to pay for the highest-rated labels without increasing inefficient choices. A conservative national calibration implies that reframing comparison can yield meaningful electricity savings where standard norms may fail.