Forget-Me-Not: The Persistent Effect of Information Provision for Adopting Climate-Friendly Goods

Yu Gao () and Massimo Tavoni ()
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Yu Gao: Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
Massimo Tavoni: Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, 20156 Milan, Italy; Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC), Resources for the Future (RFF)-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment, 20144 Milan, Italy

Management Science, 2024, vol. 70, issue 7, 4480-4501

Abstract: It is well documented that people have misperceptions about energy costs. However, there is mixed empirical evidence about the effectiveness of information provision and its persistence over time. Understanding the interplay between information regarding the private and social benefits of low-carbon technologies and identifying mechanisms through which information treatments affect people’s long-term behaviors can help reconcile the mixed findings in the literature. In this paper, we measured the long-term effects of information provision through online experiments involving more than 3,000 households in China. We provided people with information on low-carbon light bulbs’ monetary and climate benefits and observed their purchasing decisions over 10 months. We find that information on private or social benefits leads to a temporary effect on most households and a persistent one on the uninformed. This evidence suggests that information provision works through two different mechanisms: increasing saliency and filling the information gap.

Keywords: adoption of energy-efficient goods; climate change; information provision (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:70:y:2024:i:7:p:4480-4501

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