IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/soceco/v102y2023ics2214804322001276.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Nudging low-carbon consumption through advertising and social norms

Author

Listed:
  • Castro-Santa, Juana
  • Drews, Stefan
  • Bergh, Jeroen van den

Abstract

Widespread advertising of high-carbon goods challenges a shift to low-carbon consumption which is needed to limit climate change. We test the pure and combined effects of advertising and communicating a social norm on low- and high-carbon consumption. This involved presenting to 2728 US citizens an imitation Facebook homepage containing green and non-green advertising as well as weak and strong social norms to nudge low-carbon consumption. In isolation, both green advertising and social norms were effective in promoting low-carbon choices. But when combined, advertising dominated choice and counteracted the positive effects of the social norm. We show that this result is due to advertising affecting more decision channels than the social norm. It suggests that low-carbon norms have a limited effectiveness in changing consumer preferences in a world dominated by advertising.

Suggested Citation

  • Castro-Santa, Juana & Drews, Stefan & Bergh, Jeroen van den, 2023. "Nudging low-carbon consumption through advertising and social norms," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:soceco:v:102:y:2023:i:c:s2214804322001276
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2022.101956
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214804322001276
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socec.2022.101956?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Adrian R. Camilleri & Richard P. Larrick & Shajuti Hossain & Dalia Patino-Echeverri, 2019. "Consumers underestimate the emissions associated with food but are aided by labels," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 9(1), pages 53-58, January.
    2. Farrow, Katherine & Grolleau, Gilles & Ibanez, Lisette, 2017. "Social Norms and Pro-environmental Behavior: A Review of the Evidence," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 1-13.
    3. Matthes, Jörg & Wonneberger, Anke & Schmuck, Desirée, 2014. "Consumers' green involvement and the persuasive effects of emotional versus functional ads," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(9), pages 1885-1893.
    4. Robert B. Ekelund & Franklin G. Mixon & Rand W. Ressler, 1995. "Advertising and information: an empirical study of search, experience and credence goods," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing, vol. 22(2), pages 33-43, May.
    5. Hunt Allcott & Judd B. Kessler, 2019. "The Welfare Effects of Nudges: A Case Study of Energy Use Social Comparisons," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 236-276, January.
    6. Nelson, Philip, 1974. "Advertising as Information," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(4), pages 729-754, July/Aug..
    7. Kanay, Ayşegül & Hilton, Denis & Charalambides, Laetitia & Corrégé, Jean-Baptiste & Inaudi, Eva & Waroquier, Laurent & Cézéra, Stéphane, 2021. "Making the carbon basket count: Goal setting promotes sustainable consumption in a simulated online supermarket," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    8. Moorthy, Sridhar & Hawkins, Scott A., 2005. "Advertising repetition and quality perception," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 354-360, March.
    9. Kathryn L. Doherty & Thomas N. Webler, 2016. "Social norms and efficacy beliefs drive the Alarmed segment’s public-sphere climate actions," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 6(9), pages 879-884, September.
    10. Aysegul Kanay & Denis Hilton & Laetitia Charalambides & Jean-Baptiste Corrégé & Eva Inaudi & Laurent Waroquier & Stéphane Cézéra, 2021. "Making the carbon basket count: Goal setting promotes sustainable consumption in a simulated online supermarket," Post-Print hal-03403040, HAL.
    11. Farrow, Katherine & Grolleau, Gilles & Ibanez, Lisette, 2017. "Social Norms and Pro-environmental Behavior: A Review of the Evidence," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 1-13.
    12. Allcott, Hunt, 2011. "Social norms and energy conservation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(9-10), pages 1082-1095, October.
    13. Noah J. Goldstein & Robert B. Cialdini & Vladas Griskevicius, 2008. "A Room with a Viewpoint: Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental Conservation in Hotels," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 35(3), pages 472-482, March.
    14. Daniel Zizzo, 2010. "Experimenter demand effects in economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 13(1), pages 75-98, March.
    15. Garbarino, Ellen C & Edell, Julie A, 1997. "Cognitive Effort, Affect, and Choice," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 24(2), pages 147-158, September.
    16. Kanay, Ayşegül & Hilton, Denis & Charalambides, Laetitia & Corrégé, Jean-Baptiste & Inaudi, Eva & Waroquier, Laurent & Cezera, Stéphane, 2021. "Making the carbon basket count: Goal setting promotes sustainable consumption in a simulated online supermarket," TSE Working Papers 21-1191, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    17. Isabel Richter & John Thøgersen & Christian A. Klöckner, 2018. "A Social Norms Intervention Going Wrong: Boomerang Effects from Descriptive Norms Information," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(8), pages 1-20, August.
    18. Ayşegül Kanay & Denis Hilton & Laetitia Charalambides & Jean-Baptiste Corrégé & Eva Inaudi & Laurent Waroquier & Stéphane Cezera, 2021. "Making the carbon basket count: Goal setting promotes sustainable consumption in a simulated online supermarket," Post-Print hal-03159876, HAL.
    19. Allcott, Hunt, 2011. "Social norms and energy conservation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(9), pages 1082-1095.
    20. Annala, Milla & Vinnari, Markus, 2019. "Content Analysis of TV Food Advertising Using Climate Impact and a Nutritional Impact Index," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 68-74.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ma, Shiyu & Gao, Yuguo & Li, Hui, 2024. "Digital economic, resource curse and the development of low-carbon transformation," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    2. Boonpanya, Ornicha, 2024. "Exploring Digital Nudges in Green Purchase Intentions: The Influence of Green Claims and Social Norms," 24th ITS Biennial Conference, Seoul 2024. New bottles for new wine: digital transformation demands new policies and strategies 302500, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    3. Massimiliano Rizzati & Emanuele Ciola & Enrico Turco & Davide Bazzana, 2024. "Beyond Green Preferences: Alternative Pathways to Net-Zero Emissions in the MATRIX model," Working Papers 2024.03, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Itzhak Rasooly & Roberto Rozzi, 2022. "Masks, Cameras, and Social Pressure," SciencePo Working papers hal-03892947, HAL.
    2. Buckley, Penelope & Llerena, Daniel, 2022. "Nudges and peak pricing: A common pool resource energy conservation experiment," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    3. Schleich, Joachim & Alsheimer, Sven, 2024. "The relationship between willingness to pay and carbon footprint knowledge: Are individuals willing to pay more to offset their carbon footprint if they learn about its size and distance to the 1.5 °C," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 219(C).
    4. Itzhak Rasooly & Roberto Rozzi, 2022. "Masks, Cameras, and Social Pressure," Working Papers hal-03892947, HAL.
    5. Lohmann, Paul M. & Gsottbauer, Elisabeth & Doherty, Anya & Kontoleon, Andreas, 2022. "Do carbon footprint labels promote climatarian diets? Evidence from a large-scale field experiment," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    6. Luca A. Panzone & Natasha Auch & Daniel John Zizzo, 2024. "Nudging the Food Basket Green: The Effects of Commitment and Badges on the Carbon Footprint of Food Shopping," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 87(1), pages 89-133, January.
    7. Picard, Julien & Banerjee, Sanchayan, 2023. "Behavioural spillovers unpacked: estimating the side effects of social norm nudges," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 120566, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    8. d’Adda, Giovanna & Gao, Yu & Golman, Russell & Tavoni, Massimo, 2024. "Strategic information avoidance, belief manipulation and the effectiveness of green nudges," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).
    9. Itzhak Rasooly & Roberto Rozzi, 2022. "Masks, Cameras, and Social Pressure," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03892947, HAL.
    10. Bartels, Lara & Kesternich, Martin, 2022. "Motivate the crowd or crowd- them out? The impact of local government spending on the voluntary provision of a green public good," ZEW Discussion Papers 22-040, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    11. Eugen Dimant & Tobias Gesche, 2021. "Nudging Enforcers: How Norm Perceptions and Motives for Lying Shape Sanctions," CESifo Working Paper Series 9385, CESifo.
    12. W. Lasarov & S. Hoffmann & R. Mai & J. Schleich, 2024. "Carbon footprint tracking apps: The spillover effects of feedback and goal-activating appeals," Post-Print hal-04689730, HAL.
    13. Botao Qin & Haoyan Chen, 2022. "Does the nudge effect persist? Evidence from a field experiment using social comparison message in China," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(3), pages 689-703, July.
    14. Qin, Botao & Shogren, Jason, 2023. "Endogenous Social Norms, Mechanism Design, and Payment for Environmental Services," MPRA Paper 112878, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Astrid Dannenberg & Gunnar Gutsche & Marlene Batzke & Sven Christens & Daniel Engler & Fabian Mankat & Sophia Moeller & Eva Weingaertner & Andreas Ernst & Marcel Lumkowsky & Georg von Wangenheim & Ger, 2022. "The effects of norms on environmental behavior," MAGKS Papers on Economics 202219, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    16. Holzmeister, Felix & Huber, Jürgen & Kirchler, Michael & Schwaiger, Rene, 2022. "Nudging debtors to pay their debt: Two randomized controlled trials," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 535-551.
    17. Czajkowski, Mikołaj & Zagórska, Katarzyna & Hanley, Nick, 2019. "Social norm nudging and preferences for household recycling," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    18. Joseph,George & Ayling,Sophie Charlotte Emi & Miquel-Florensa,Pepita & Bejarano,Hernán D. & Cardona,Alejandra Quevedo, 2021. "Behavioral Insights in Infrastructure Sectors : A Survey," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9704, The World Bank.
    19. Zehui, Zhao, 2023. "Pro-Environmental Behavior and Actions: A Review of the Literature," OSF Preprints cajup, Center for Open Science.
    20. Zehui, Zhao, 2023. "Pro-Environmental Behavior and Actions: Review of current theories and agenda for future research," SocArXiv p27hb, Center for Open Science.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:soceco:v:102:y:2023:i:c:s2214804322001276. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620175 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.