nep-res New Economics Papers
on Resource Economics
Issue of 2023‒12‒18
two papers chosen by
  1. Augmented Reality Technology as a Tool for Promoting Pro-environmental Behavior and Attitudes By Giuseppe Attanasi; Barbara Buljat Raymond; Agnès Festré; Andrea Guido
  2. Environmental Externalities and Free-Riding in the Household By B. Kelsey Jack; Seema Jayachandran; Flavio Malagutti; Sarojini Rao
  1. By: Giuseppe Attanasi (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy; BETA, University of Strasbourg, France; Université Côte d'Azur, CNRS, GREDEG, France); Barbara Buljat Raymond (Université Côte d'Azur, France; GREDEG CNRS); Agnès Festré (Université Côte d'Azur, France; GREDEG CNRS); Andrea Guido (Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté; Burgundy School of Business)
    Abstract: We test whether augmented reality (AR) can serve as a fundraising tool by providing a more immersive way of communicating about environmental issues. In two incentivized studies, we exposed people to AR visualizations illustrating the consequences of plastic pollution, and measure the effect on participant' psychological distance, concern, intention to act and real proenvironmental behavior (donation to pro-environmental organizations). Results show evidence of heterogeneous effects depending on participants’ self-reported pro-environmental attitudes and personal characteristics: following the intervention, individuals with low environmental engagement were likely to reduce their psychological distance, while the opposite happened for individuals engaged in sustainable practices. However, despite AR visualizations reduced the psychological distance of a subset of individuals, our experimental intervention did not increase donation levels. Taken together, our results raise concerns about the use of AR technologies in fundraising and highlight the need for personalised interventions that take into account the heterogeneity of target groups.
    Keywords: Augmented Reality (AR), experiment, decision making, environmental fundraising, psychological distance, pro-environmental behavior, pro-environmental attitudes
    Date: 2023–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gre:wpaper:2023-15&r=res
  2. By: B. Kelsey Jack (University of California); Seema Jayachandran (Princeton University); Flavio Malagutti (University of California); Sarojini Rao (Virginia Department of Planning and Budget)
    Abstract: In addition to generating a negative environmental externality, a household’s water consumption entails another “market failure†: household members free-ride off each other and overconsume. The problem stems from consumption being billed at the household level and the difficulty of monitoring one another’s consumption. We document the importance of this phenomenon in urban Zambia by combining utility billing records and randomized person-specific price variation. We derive and empirically confirm the following prediction: Individuals with weaker incentives to conserve under the household’s financial arrangements reduce water use more when their person-specific price increases. Another prediction is that this overconsumption problem is more acute when the financial benefit of a lower utility bill is shared unevenly among household members. We show that households indeed seem more responsive to a change in the household-level price of water when their financial arrangements are more equal. Our results offer a novel explanation for the low price sensitivity of residential water (and electricity) consumption.
    Keywords: environmental externalities, intrahousehold decision-making, moral hazard, Pigouvian pricing, water use
    JEL: D10 H21 H23 O10 Q56
    Date: 2023–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pri:econom:2023-13&r=res
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