Creating pro-environmental behavior change: Economic incentives or norm-nudges?

Mathias Ekström (), Hallgeir Sjåstad () and Kjetil Bjorvatn ()
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Mathias Ekström: Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Postal: NHH, Department of Economics, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway, https://sites.google.com/site/matekstrom
Hallgeir Sjåstad: Dept. of Strategy and Management, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Postal: NHH, Department of Economics, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway, https://sites.google.com/view/hallgeir-sjastad/home
Kjetil Bjorvatn: Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Postal: NHH, Department of Economics, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway, https://www.nhh.no/en/employees/faculty/kjetil-bjorvatn/

No 15/2024, Discussion Paper Series in Economics from Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics

Abstract: To mitigate global warming, collective behavior change is needed. But which tools should policymakers prioritize: economic incentives, nudges, or a combination? Current evidence from social science provides little direct advice, as it either lacks credible identification of causality or objective long-term behavioral data. Addressing both limitations, we present causal evidence from a two-year field experiment, comparing how a small price incentive and a social norm-nudge affect the recycling behavior of more than 2,000 households. The results show a large, immediate, and persistent positive effect of incentives on both the quantity and quality of recycling, but no effect of the norm-nudge. However, the price incentive reduced customer satisfaction, unless it was combined with the norm-nudge, suggesting that appealing to norms can make climate incentives more acceptable.

Keywords: economic incentives; nudges; behavior change; norm-nudge (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 J12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2024-09-26
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-ene, nep-env, nep-exp, nep-hme and nep-nud
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