The potential behavioural effect of personal carbon trading: results from an experimental survey

Tradable credits for managing car travel: a review of empirical research and relevant behavioural approaches

“…With regard to socio-economic effects, older respondents were less willing to change their mileage than younger participants in the trading condition. Zanni, Bristow, and Wardman (2013) also found a relative hesitance to realise savings in the travel domain, including air travel. In their experiment, a PCT scheme achieved an 11.4% carbon reduction in the travel domain, whereas overall, the reduction in participants' initial carbon footprint was 13.3%.…”

“…First, with regard to measuring behavioural change, the present set of studies on individual TC responses represents a very diverse body when it comes to the unit of analysis: annual carbon consumption/distance/number of trips (Capstick & Lewis, 2010;Parag et al, 2011;Raux et al, 2015a;Zanni et al, 2013), set of activities/trips (Aziz et al, 2015;Harwatt et al, 2011;Kockelman & Kalmanje, 2005) or a single trip (Raux et al, 2015b). Unfortunately, studies that measure individual TC effects using a fictitious base situation (e.g.…”

“…Zanni et al (2013) found evidence for diminishing sensitivity as the importance of total gain/loss in determining the probability of employing carbon consumption actions decreased with an increase in total price. This finding resonates with the study by Tillema et al (2013), which also demonstrated a decrease in the magnitude of behavioural adjustments relative to the increase in costs/ gains.…”

“…Similar to the strategy of Capstick and Lewis, Zanni et al (2013), comparing a PCT and a carbon tax scheme, first calculated participants' current carbon consumption and then presented several carbon-saving actions together with their monetary consequences to participants. They estimated regression models to link carbon reduction choices to participants' socio-economic characteristics, attitudes, current transport use, housing tenure and perceived abatement costs.…”

“…In current empirical TC studies, only Zanni et al (2013) have explicitly addressed the relative impact of facing a loss and a gain on choice outcomes and indeed found that the total price had a greater effect on the choice to reduce carbon consumption for respondents in a loss situation than for those in a gain situation.…”