Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/266031 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Series/Report no.: 
MAGKS Joint Discussion Paper Series in Economics No. 33-2022
Publisher: 
Philipps-University Marburg, School of Business and Economics, Marburg
Abstract: 
Cities are increasingly hold accountable for climate action. By demonstrating their proenvironmentality through own climate-related activities, they not at least aspire to encourage individual climate protection efforts. Based on standard economic theory there is little reason to assume that this is a promising strategy. Financed by taxpayers' money, cities' contributions are considered as substitutes that crowd-out private contributions to the same public good. Inspired by research on providing information on reference group behavior, we challenge this argument and conduct a framed-field experiment to analyze the impact of reference group information on the voluntary provision of a green public good. We investigate whether information on previous contributions by fellow citizens or the city affect individual contributions. We do not find statistical evidence that city-level information crowds-out additional individual contributions. A reference to fellow citizens significantly increases the share of contributors as it attracts subjects that are not per-se pro-environmentally oriented.
Subjects: 
Voluntary provision of environmental public goods
Social Norms
Crowding-out
Willingness to pay
Framed-field experiment
JEL: 
C93
C83
D9
H41
Q54
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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