The role of preferences for pro-environmental behaviour among urban middle class households in Peru

Hanna Fuhrmann-Riebel, Ben D'Exelle and Arjan Verschoor

Ecological Economics, 2021, vol. 180, issue C

Abstract: Pro-environmental behaviour (PEB) is known to reflect people's social preferences, time preferences and risk preferences. Previous research has tended to consider these in isolation, which means they may proxy for omitted ones, leading to biased estimates. Moreover, it has not considered ambiguity preferences, which for some PEBs is conceptually more relevant than risk preferences. Using a survey module from the Global Preference Survey (GPS), we investigate the role of a large range of preferences for PEB in a sample of 900 middle class households in Lima, Peru. The PEBs we consider are habitually saving energy, avoiding the use of plastics, and limiting expenditures on electricity. We find that social preferences matter mainly for saving-energy behaviour; time, risk and ambiguity preferences matter mainly for the consumption of plastics; and time and ambiguity preferences matter for expenditures on electricity. The insight that particular preferences matter for particular PEBs has important policy implications.

Keywords: Risk Preferences; Ambiguity Preferences; Time Preferences; Social Preferences; Pro-Environmental Behaviour (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800920306509
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:180:y:2021:i:c:s0921800920306509

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106850

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().