159 – Nudging and environmental corporate responsibility: A natural experiment

Abstract

We devise a ‘nudging’ natural experiment to test the impact of a simple form of advertising on  environmentally responsible products with/without the increase of the responsible product price.

We find that the simple use of a small shelf-poster explaining the importance of buying a green product (with/without a concurring price increase) generates significant changes in market shares for some of the product classes for both food and non-food products.

Part of the effect is generated by the reduced price elasticity of consumers to the poster-plus-price-increase treatment.

Keywords:

nudging, environmental sustainability, randomized field experiment.

JEL Classification:

C93(Field experiments),D12(Consumer economics: empirical analysis),M14(Corporate culture; Social Responsibility),Q56(Environment and Development; Sustainability)