Experiments on Green Goods

2011 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 21530213
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Applied economics
• Research Institution: National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies
• Principal Investigator: ALISTAIR Munro 政策研究大学院大学, 政策研究科, 教授 (10515654)
• Project Period (FY): 2009 – 2011
• Keywords: Green goods / greenwash / economics experiments / environmental policy / moral wriggling / impure public goods

Research Abstract

Green goods are everyday products with an environmental benefit attached. For instance, a carbon-neutral airline flight is a green good. Possibly, the existence of green goods leads to greater environmental protection. But often, only a small fraction of the price goes towards environmental protection, a feature labelled' greenwash'.
Using economics experiments we find that offering subjects the chance to buy a green good can lead to a drop in total contributions to the environmental cause. Because they buy the green good, subjects stop making separate donations to the environmental cause. Meanwhile, some subjects are willing to pay money to avoid a moral dilemma where they are asked to contribute to the environmental good cause.
Overall it seems green goods can lead to less money going to environmental causes.

Research Products

• [Journal Article] On the behavioural relevance of optional and mandatory impure public goods : results from a laboratory experiment (2012)
  • Author(s): Dirk Engelmann and Alistair Munro and Marieta Valente
  • Journal Title: GRIPS National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies Pages: 11-17
• [Journal Article] Green goods : are they good or bad news for the environment? Evidence from a laboratory experiment on impure public goods (2011)
  • Author(s): Alistair Munro and Marieta Valente
  • Journal Title: Nucleo de Investigacao em Microeconomia Aplicada(NIMA) Pages: 37
• [Presentation] On the behavioural relevance of optional and mandatory impure public goods : results from a laboratory experiment (2012)
  • Author(s): Alistair Munro
  • Organizer: Asia Pacific Meeting of the Economic Science Association
  • Place of Presentation: Xiamen University, Xiamen, China
  • Year and Date: 20120100
• [Presentation] On the behavioural relevance of optional and mandatory impure public goods : results from a laboratory experiment (2010)
  • Author(s): Marieta Valente
  • Organizer: World Meeting of the Economic Science Association
  • Place of Presentation: University of Copenhagen, Denmark
  • Year and Date: 20100708-09
• [Presentation] Green goods : are they good or bad news for the environment? Evidence from a laboratory experiment on impure public goods (2010)
  • Author(s): Alistair Munro
  • Organizer: World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economics(WCERE)
  • Place of Presentation: USQAM, Montreal, Canada
  • Year and Date: 2010-06-30
• [Presentation] Green goods : are they good or bad news for the environment? Evidence from a laboratory experiment on impure public goods (2009)
  • Author(s): Marieta Valente
  • Organizer: IAREP Workshop on : The economic psychology of giving, public goods and leadership
  • Place of Presentation: University of Kent, UK
  • Year and Date: 2009-11-13
• [Presentation] On the behavioural relevance of optional and mandatory impure public goods : results from a laboratory experiment
  • Author(s): Marieta Valente
  • Organizer: 5th Annual Meeting of the Portuguese Economic Journal
• [Remarks] 研究に関するウェブサイト
  • URL: http://www3.grips.ac.jp/~munro/green.htm
• [Remarks] 上記のほか、' academia. edu'、ssrn(social science research network)、repec(research papers in economics)など多様な研究ネットワークサイトに情報を投稿している。
• [Remarks] 研究代表者は、2012年7月に開催されるthe Knowledge Sharing Forum of the World Bankにおいて、研究成果のプレゼンテーションを行う予定である。