Nudging the Norm: Shifting Sustainable Economic Behavior

Abstract

Individual behaviors significantly affect the environment, which is deteriorating at an increasing rate. Despite this, the field of sustainable economic behavior remains relatively unexplored. In the present research, the proposition that messages communicating collective action and collective efficacy increase the tendency to engage in more sustainable behavior was explored in an experimental survey setting among Dutch participants. This was done in a more isolated choice experiment, namely a contingent valuation experiment measuring the willingness to pay for organic apples among participants, and in a more social choice experiment, namely a public goods game measuring the willingness to invest in a hypothetical sustainable project. Insignificant effects of aforementioned messages are found in both experiments, and it is stressed that more research is needed into the mediating role of collective efficacy perceptions in the study of collective efficacy messaging and its effects on actual behavior. This thesis adds to the field of sustainable economic behavior, demonstrating that the study of collective efficacy messaging requires further scrutiny