Environmental policy and immersive technologies

Barbara Buljat ()
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Barbara Buljat: Université Côte d'Azur, CNRS, GREDEG

Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, 2022, vol. 6, issue S1, 41-47

Abstract: The level of environmental degradation caused by human activities has risen at an alarming rate. Under pressure to motivate people towards green behavior, governments rely on financial incentives, but traditional policy instruments often encounter public opposition and do not have the desired effect. Environmental policy-makers communicating about environmental issues face a challenge: people fail to recognize environmental problems because the consequences are usually temporally or physically distant from the causes. Immersive technologies, such as virtual and augmented reality, offer an opportunity to bridge this gap by providing direct experiences of environmental threats in a safe environment. These virtual experiences could reduce perceived psychological distance, enhance risk perception of environmental issues, and motivate behavior change before environmental damage is caused. Also, by bringing the field in the lab, virtual environments provide the context to laboratory experiments needed for investigating human behavior. Given these arguments, immersive technologies point to a promising tool for environmental policy implementation and evaluation. This article presents an original survey covering experimental studies that were 1) conducted in virtual environments and 2) have explicit implications for environmental policies. Recommendations for policy-makers and future studies are suggested.

Keywords: environmental policy; pro-environmental behavior; virtual experiments; immersive technologies; behavior change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D91 O35 Q51 Q55 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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