Is pro-environmental effort affected by information about others’ behavior?

Dominik Suri, Niklas Bongers and Sebastian Kube

Ecological Economics, 2025, vol. 228, issue C

Abstract: Strengthening pro-environmental behavior, as well as understanding its drivers, is crucial for the fight against global warming. In this study, we (i) shed light on the behavioral determinants of pro-environmental efforts and (ii) explore the potential of information provision (about others’ efforts) to shape pro-environmental behavior. US citizens (n=782) in our online experiment are given the opportunity to work on a limited number of real-effort transcription tasks. For each task completed, one tree is planted via a specialized charitable organization. In addition to this incentivized measure of pro-environmental effort, we elicit subjects’ (beliefs about others’) willingness to fight global warming, both in general and w.r.t. specific actions. We find that these beliefs are updated, in particular by subjects that underestimate the actual value, when information about others’ actual willingness to fight global warming is provided. Surprisingly, the observed significant upward shift in beliefs does not translate into higher levels of exerted pro-environmental effort. In addition to our main results, we provide correlational evidence that economic preferences, in particular altruism and positive reciprocity, and universalist values are deeply intertwined with acting pro-environmentally.

Keywords: Climate change; Pro-environmental behavior; Real-effort task; Beliefs; Information shock; Online experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D64 D83 D91 Q51 Q54 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800924003343
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:228:y:2025:i:c:s0921800924003343

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2024.108437

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 ().