Carbon literacy – Can simple interventions help? Effect of information provision on emissions knowledge of private households

Understanding public perceptions of various carbon abatement behaviours and how these can be influenced with informational interventions is an essential prerequisite to encourage low-carbon behaviour. By means of a survey experiment among a representative sample of 1492 German households, I evaluate individual carbon literacy, i.e. the ability to perceive the carbon emissions associated with individual actions, based on a ranking task of abatement behaviours. Using two treatment interventions, I test whether simple information provision in the form of a ranking of the most carbon-intense household actions or a heuristic for carbon intensities can correct misperceptions and thus increase carbon literacy. The results show that Germans severely underestimate the abatement potential of reduced meat consumption, avoiding food waste, and to a lesser extent of not driving a car, while they overestimate the potential of recycling and avoiding plastic bags. While the heuristic fails to increase carbon literacy, the ranking does so by a significant amount. In particular, it corrects the perceptions of the top mitigating actions. However, the severe underestimation of a vegetarian diet and avoiding food waste persists. This indicates that especially the underestimation of food-related emissions is deep-rooted.