3,272 research outputs found
Conservation Behavior: From Voluntary Restraint to a Voluntary Price Premium
This paper provides a theoretical and empirical investigation of conservation behavior that is motivated by concern for the environment. Two types of behavior are considered. First, individuals who care about environmental quality may voluntarily restrain their consumption of goods and services that generate a negative externality. Second, individuals may choose to pay a voluntary price premium for goods and services that are more "environmentally friendly." A theoretical model highlights the relationship between such voluntary restraint and a voluntary price premium. We test predictions of the model in an empirical study of household electricity consumption with introduction of a price-premium, green-electricity program. We find evidence of voluntary restraint and its relation to a voluntary price premium. The empirical results are consistent with the model of conservation behavior, as none of the theoretical predictions can be rejected.Consumer, Electricity, Environment, Households, Individual
Private Provision of Environmental Public Goods: Household Participation in Green-Electricity Programs
Green-electricity programs provide an opportunity to study private provision of public goods in a field setting. The first part of this paper develops a theoretical framework to analyze household decisions about voluntary participation in green-electricity programs. We consider different participation mechanisms and show how they relate to existing theory on either pure or impure public goods. The models are used to examine the implications of participation mechanisms for the level of public-good provision. The second part of the paper provides an empirical investigation of actual participation decisions in two green- electricity programs: one based on a pure public good and the other based on an impure public good. The data come from original household surveys of participants and nonparticipants in both programs, along with utility data on household electricity consumption. The econometric results are interpreted in the context of the theoretical models and are compared to other studies of privately provided public goods.Pure and impure public goods, private provision, green electricity
Continuous-wave Cascaded-Harmonic Generation and Multi-Photon Raman Lasing in Lithium Niobate Whispering-Gallery Resonators
We report experimental demonstration of continuous-wave cascaded-harmonic
generation and Raman lasing in a millimeter-scale lithium niobate
whispering-gallery resonator pumped at a telecommunication-compatible infrared
wavelength. Intensity enhancement through multiple recirculations in the
whispering-gallery resonator and quasi phase-matching through a nonuniform
crystal poling enable simultaneous cascaded-harmonic generation up to the
fourth-harmonic accompanied by stimulated Raman, two-photon, three-photon, and
four-photon Raman scattering corresponding the molecular vibrational
wavenumbers 632 cm-1 and 255 cm-1 in z-cut lithium niobate at pump power levels
as low as 200mW. We demonstrate simultaneous cascaded-harmonic generation and
Raman lasing by observing the spectrum of the scattered light from the
resonator and by capturing the image of the decoupled light from the resonator
on a color CCD camera
- …