Gosnell, Greer (2018) Communicating resourcefully: a natural field experiment on environmental framing and cognitive dissonance in going paperless. Ecological Economics, 154. pp. 128-144. ISSN 0921-8009
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Abstract
In a large-scale natural field experiment comprising 38,654 customers of a renewable energy supplier in the United Kingdom, we randomize environmental information and dissonance-inducing messaging to promote an active switch from paper to online billing. We find that environmental information and imagery is ineffective in inducing behavior change. Interestingly, the dissonance-inducing messaging weakly improves uptake by 1.2 percentage points among our main sample but backfires among a subsample of individuals with doctoral educations, decreasing uptake by 6.2 percentage points relative to a control group. Contrary to the majority of the literature on gender and environmental behavior, females in our sample are less likely to switch to paperless billing.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/ecological-e... |
| Additional Information: | © 2018 Elsevier B.V. |
| Divisions: | Grantham Research Institute |
| Subjects: | G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences |
| JEL classification: | D - Microeconomics > D1 - Household Behavior and Family Economics > D12 - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis D - Microeconomics > D8 - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty > D83 - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief L - Industrial Organization > L2 - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior > L21 - Business Objectives of the Firm Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q2 - Renewable Resources and Conservation > Q29 - Other |
| Date Deposited: | 09 Aug 2018 10:19 |
| Last Modified: | 11 Dec 2024 21:42 |
| Projects: | ES/K006576/1 |
| Funders: | Economic and Social Research Council |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/89815 |
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