Pricing decisions in peer-to-peer and prosumer-centred electricity markets: Experimental analysis in Germany and the United Kingdom

Prosumer-centred electricity market models such as peer-to-peer communities can enable optimized supply and demand of locally generated electricity as well as an active participation of citizens in the energy transition. An important element of active participation is the improved ability of community members to identify and choose who they transact with in a much more granular way than is usual. Despite this key novelty and the social core of prosumer-centred markets, little is known about how citizens would trade with different actors involved in the system. This article reports a preregistered cross-national experiment investigating individual trading preferences in a peer-to-peer community with a variety of private and non-private trading actors. The data from the United Kingdom (n = 441) and Germany (n = 440) shows that set buying and selling prices strongly vary, pointing to three systematically different trading strategies that individuals apply as a function of involved trading actor. Findings moreover reveal that trading decisions are determined by individuals’ political orientation, place attachment, and climate change beliefs as well as individual differences in trust in the involved trading actor. Finally, the results illustrate high consistency in trading preferences across nations. However, nation-level differences emerged when decisions were made publicly visible, emphasising the need to consider context-effects in peer-to-peer system design. The findings have implications for the development of prosumer-centred energy models and the design of interventions to increase citizen participation across national contexts

The power of putting a label on it: green labels weigh heavier than contradicting product information for consumers’ purchase decisions and post-purchase behavior

Green products are appealing. Thus, labeling products as environmentally friendly is an effective strategy to increase sales. However, the labels often promise more than the products can actually deliver. In the present research, we examined the expectation that consumers with high ecological motivation have strong preferences for green-labeled products – even when presented product information contradicts the label’s image. This unsettling hypothesis is grounded in the labels’ potential to create a cognitive match between the labeled product and consumers’ motives. For labels indicating environmental friendliness (green product labels), this link should be strongest when consumers’ ecological motivation is high. Findings in a series of three experiments support our assumption, showing that consumers with high ecological motivation had strong preferences (i.e. product evaluations, purchase intentions, and simulated purchase decisions) for green-labeled products as compared to consumers with low ecological motivation (Studies 1-3). Crucially, these preferences were robust, despite contradicting environmental product information (Studies 1 and 2). We extended our findings by additionally examining the impact of product labels and motivation on moral self-regulation processes. This was established by assessing participants’ pro-social behavior after the purchase task: participants with high ecological motivation acted, consistent with their motives, more pro-socially in post-decision occasions. In accordance with moral cleansing effects, pro-social behavior was intensified after purchasing conventional products (Studies 2 and 3). Green labels protected participants with high ecological motivation from moral threats due to the purchase, thus making pro-social behavior less likely. Findings suggest that highly ecologically motivated consumers are most susceptible to green labels, which may override detailed product information

Addressing climate change with behavioral science: a global intervention tournament in 63 countries

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions’ effectiveness was small, largely limited to nonclimate skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened mostly by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future-generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior—several interventions even reduced tree planting. Last, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people’s initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors

Promoting Decentralized Sustainable Energy Systems in Different Supply Scenarios: The Role of Autarky Aspiration

The development of decentralized renewable energy systems is of crucial importance for the decarbonization of energy generation worldwide. Purchase decisions regarding innovative energy systems depend to some extent on consumers’ perception of the systems’ degree of autarky. We assumed that, in addition to the energetic perspective, consumers associate other non-energetic facets such as independence, autonomy, self-sufficiency, or control with the concept of autarky. These psychological facets of autarky were expected to contribute to purchase decisions. In Study 1, participants (N = 168) evaluated three future energy supply scenarios. The scenarios varied regarding their range of autarky (household/neighborhood/small town), but the individually realized degree of energetic autarky did not vary. Participants reported a higher willingness to pay in connection with a higher perceived psychological autarky for the Household Scenario. Study 1’s findings were confirmed by Study 2, in which qualitative interviews (N = 13) also revealed that participants favored the Household Scenario on several points. These evaluations were driven by the anticipated psychological facets of autarky that is the subjective perception of being independent, autonomous, self-sufficient, energy secure, and of control. To promote an adoption of renewable energy systems, these psychological autarky facets need to be addressed. Enabling the people to self-determine, control, and secure their energy provision even in complex organizational settings in such a manner is likely to increase their acceptance and therefore foster the required social transition as a whole

Mental accounting mechanisms in energy decision-making and behaviour

Mental accounting refers to the fact that people create mental budgets to organize their resource use and to create linkages between specific acts of consumption and specific payments. Research on financial decision-making and consumer behaviour shows that these mechanisms can have a large impact on decisions and behaviours, deviating from normative economic principles. Here we introduce a theoretical framework illustrating how mental accounting mechanisms may influence individual decisions and behaviours driving energy consumption and carbon emissions. We demonstrate the practical relevance of mental accounting in the context of designing carbon pricing mechanisms and discuss the ethical dimensions of applying the concept to intervention design. By bridging the mental accounting literature and research in the energy domain, we aim to stimulate the study of the cognitive mechanisms underlying energy-relevant decisions and the development of novel theory-based interventions targeting reductions of energy use and carbon emissions

Social_dilemma_revision4_suppl – Supplemental material for Affective Dilemmas: The Impact of Trait Affect and State Emotion on Sustainable Consumption Decisions in a Social Dilemma Task

<p>Supplemental material, Social_dilemma_revision4_suppl for Affective Dilemmas: The Impact of Trait Affect and State Emotion on Sustainable Consumption Decisions in a Social Dilemma Task by Céline Tarditi, Ulf J. J. Hahnel, Noémie Jeanmonod, David Sander and Tobias Brosch in Environment and Behavior</p