Heterogeneous treatment effects and mechanisms in information-based environmental policies: Evidence from a large-scale field experiment

Ferraro, Paul J.; Miranda, Juan José

doi:10.1016/j.reseneeco.2013.04.001

Cited by 139 publications

(89 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Perhaps the closest to our paper is a recent economics literature studying conservation campaigns for electricity and water (Allcott, 2011;Allcott and Rogers, 2014;Ayres et al, 2013;Ferraro and Miranda, 2013;Ferraro and Price, 2013;Jessoe and Rapson, 2014;Reiss and White, 2008). 3 Our work differs from these in three key ways.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing nonpayment for public utilities: Experimental evidence from South Africa

Szabó

Ujhelyi

2015

Journal of Development Economics

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing nonpayment for public utilities: Experimental evidence from South Africa

Szabó

Ujhelyi

2015

Journal of Development Economics

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“…To name only a few recent economics papers, see Allcott (), Costa and Kahn (), Ferraro and Price (), Ferraro and Miranda (), Allcott and Rogers (), and Bhanot ().…”

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confidence: 99%

“…For example, Ferraro and Miranda () reported that an average household in their control group consumed 21,790 gal of water from December 2007 to March 2008, or 673.6 l per day. Because toilets account for about 26.7% of the water consumed in the average U.S. home, showers about 16.7%, and faucets about 15.7%, if we assume that approximately 59.2% of the water use occurs in the bathroom, an average household in Ferraro and Miranda's residential control group used 398.8 l per day in the bathroom, which was less than the 442.4 l PN our control group used.…”

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Every Drop Counts: A Water Conservation Experiment With Hotel Guests

2018

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We implement a field experiment with hotel guests to measure the effects of nonprice interventions on water conservation and customer satisfaction. In hotels, guests have no direct pecuniary incentive to conserve water, as consumers do at home, where they pay their own water bills. Because hotels earn greater profits when they manage to convince guests to conserve, guests may be suspicious of a hotel's stated social goal of water conservation. By implementing behavioral interventions that address these challenges, we find that our nudges can induce guests to reduce their water consumption, even when no direct monetary incentive is provided. Using post‐stay customer surveys, we detected no adverse effects on customer satisfaction due to these nudges. (JEL D12, I31, Q41, Q50)

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“…As to the latter (direct water conservation), a field experiment with about 100,000 randomly selected households in the metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia, in 2007, provided evidence that those households were most responsive to descriptive norm messages that were relatively wealthy, owner-occupied and above-average water users (Ferraro and Miranda 2013). 34 In contrast to Schultz et al (2007), the authors did not find any evidence for people responding with an increase in 'gray' behavior (i.e., the boomerang effect).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…35 Nonetheless, any behavioral impact waned over time. Ferraro and Miranda (2013) conclude that norm-based messages should target those subgroups known to be most responsive, thereby making the program cost-effective (ibid. ).…”

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Green Nudges: Do They Work? Are They Ethical?

Schubert

2016

SSRN Journal

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Real-world consumers, though, are motivated by more than incentives and information (Michalek et al. 2015). These are innovative policy tools that are designed with a specific focus on behavioral factors 1 Most economist readers can be assumed to be familiar with the key insights of Behavioral Economics; those interested in the details may be referred to the excellent surveys by Camerer and Loewenstein (2004) and Della Vigna (2009). Van den Bergh et al. (2000) give an outline of behavioral economics insights with a focus on their relevance for environmental economics prior to Nudge. The contributions by Norton et al. (1998) and Söderbaum (1994) are particularly interesting as precursors of the nudge agenda, as they argue that environmental policies should try to exploit endogenous preference change. 2 An important exception to that rule was Jack Knetsch, see, e.g. Knetsch and Sinden (1984), Knetsch (1989 and structured. To nudge someone is to deliberately intervene in a given CA. Nudges are widely regarded as potential complements to more traditional incentive-based regulation; the hope is that adding them to the policy mix may be both more effective and more popular among the general public than relying on traditional regulatory tools alone (Thaler and Sunstein 2008: ch. 12). 6 As Cass Sunstein (2014: 13) puts it, the general aim is to develop "sensible, low-cost policies with close reference to how human beings actually think and behave." There is an important caveat, though: Due to their unclear welfare foundations and the potentially paternalistic and manipulative way in which these tools shape human behavior (viz., by addressing and exploiting cognitive biases), nudges raise complex ethical questions. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor mayThe exact definition of nudges is a matter of some controversy. What's typically offered as a back-of-the-envelope definition -"interventions that influence people's behavior without significantly changing their monetary incentives or coercing them" -is unhelpful, as it also lets the mere provision of information count as a nudge. We rather suggest to follow Hansen (2016) by supplementing this shorthand with the notion, originally advanced by Thaler and Sunstein (2008: 8) To illustrate, the subsidy and tax schemes discussed by Allcott and Taubinsky (2015) in the context of energy efficiency policy qualify as BEP in our sense of the term. 5 See in particular (ibid.: ch. 12) on green nudging, and Sunstein (201...

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Heterogeneous treatment effects and mechanisms in information-based environmental policies: Evidence from a large-scale field experiment

Cited by 139 publications

References 37 publications

Reducing nonpayment for public utilities: Experimental evidence from South Africa

Reducing nonpayment for public utilities: Experimental evidence from South Africa

Every Drop Counts: A Water Conservation Experiment With Hotel Guests

Green Nudges: Do They Work? Are They Ethical?

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