Environmental Behaviour and Decision Making - Evidence from Laboratory, Online and Natural Experiments

Abstract

Tackling climate change and keeping global temperatures from rising by more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels is one of the major and most challenging issues that our societies are facing. Households are among the prime contributors to annual greenhouse gas emissions, with twenty percent of emissions being generated by residential energy consumption. Therefore, understanding individual decision-making in relation to environmental matters is key to designing effective climate change policies. A vast body of literature studies how to encourage pro-environmental behaviours, from the adoption of price interventions and regulations, to the use of less invasive measures like information campaigns and other nudges. The research indicates a significant variation in the effectiveness of such policies and interventions, depending on the targeted behaviour, the selected measure and the context in which it was applied. This thesis aims to provide a clearer picture of the link between the environment and individual decision-making by exploring it from three different perspectives. It studies how performing a pro-environmental behaviour affects people's decisions to undertake subsequent environmentally-friendly actions; how the framing of energy information impacts household consumption choices; and how environmental factors affect individuals' voting decisions. Considering such a cohesive framework is important because environmental behaviour can affect policy design through the influence of environmental factors on voting, and, in turn, policy design determines the performance of pro-environmental behaviour.