Are non-contingent incentives more effective in motivating new behavior? Evidence from the field

Organizations and policymakers increasingly rely on economic incentives to prompt participation in activities amongst those who were previously not engaged. We ran a field experiment with a recycling program to examine incentives' effectiveness to motivate new behavior—i.e., attract non-recyclers. We compared standard contingent incentives (payment contingent on recycling) to non-contingent incentives (upfront unconditional payment) of different sizes. A high contingent incentive was as effective as a non-contingent incentive (of any size) in attracting people to the program, but this masked differences in who participated. Across incentive sizes, people who had never recycled were 5.8 times more likely to begin recycling with the program when given a non-contingent incentive (20.2%) than when offered a contingent one (3.5%). A second experiment conceptually replicated this effect in an online job market, showing that non-contingent incentives were substantially more effective in attracting previous non-compliers.ANID FONDECYT 1191745 Complex Engineering Systems Institute ANID APOYO/BASAL AFB180003Versión sometida a revisión - Preprin

The chill of the moment: emotions and proenvironmental behavior

Many serious problems, including those associated with the environment, warrant a sustained response, but the emotions that motivate action are often transient. The authors conducted five online experiments examining the impact of affective ads about global warming on proenvironmental behaviors. They find that sadness-inducing videos lead to more time devoted to an energy-footprint calculator and greater donations to an environmental organization than nonaffective videos. However, once emotions have cooled off after a delay, there are no differences in induced behavior between affective and nonaffective messages. Warning people that emotions, and their effects on behavior, cool off does not reverse the effects of the time delay unless people make a nonbinding commitment just after watching the affective ad. These results help to explain why emotion-evoking ads designed to promote proenvironmental behaviors, such as cutting energy use, often fail to produce sustained behavior change, and they suggest that those who seek to promote a sustained response may need to elicit behavioral commitments in moments of high emotion.FONDECYT 11140374 Complex Engineering Systems Institute CONICYT-PIA-FB081

Encouraging pro-environmental behaviour through green identity labelling

Promoting products for 'green' people has become an important strategy to encourage sustainable consumption. We test the effectiveness of the green identity labelling technique, which encourages pro-environmental purchases by associating them with an eco-friendly image. We conducted four experiments (online, laboratory and two field experiments) in which individuals could purchase green products that, in the treatment groups, were accompanied by a green identity label (for example, 'this product is for green shoppers'). We find that the green identity labelling technique increases purchase of environmentally friendly products across the consumer settings examined in our experiments. We also examine factors that can moderate this effect. Green identity labels increase sales only if no price discount on the green product is advertised, and they have a bigger impact on people with demographics associated with pro-environmental values.ANID FONDECYT 1191745 Complex Engineering Systems Institute (ANID APOYO/BASAL) AFB18000