Let us buy sustainable! The impact of cash mobs on sustainable consumption: Experimental results

JOURNAL OF CLEANER PRODUCTION

卷:317

Article

Becchetti, Leonardo¹  Fiaschetti, Maurizio^2,4  Salustri, Francesco³ 

[1] Univ Roma Tor Vergata, Dept Econ & Finance, Via Columbia 2, I-00133 Rome, Italy

[2] Univ Nottingham Business Sch, Jubilee Campus,Wollaton Rd, Nottingham NG8 1BB, England

[3] UCL, Inst Global Hlth, 30 Guilford St, London WC1N 1EH, England

[4] Univ London, UCL Inst Finance & Technol, Chadwick Bldg,Gower St, London WC1 E6BT, England

关键词: Sustainable consumption;    Consumer behaviour;    Green products;    Product responsibility;    Collective decisions;    Randomised experiment;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.128419

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

Cash mob is a practice where groups of people gather at local shops to buy a given product (usually with a strong sustainable feature) and make their decisions visible to the general public. With our paper we aim to assess the effectiveness of the cash mob as a behavioural tool and provide a better understanding of the behavioural triggers of consumers' decision making process. We run a laboratory experiment where we mimic sustainable consumption and the cash mob treatment is embedded in a sequential game structure with/without an environmental frame. We find that the cash mob treatment has a positive gross effect, that is, the share of sustainable consumers is significantly higher in treated sessions. We also document a significant effect of expectations about the number of those eliciting a sustainable behaviour depending on participants' previous choices. Our results suggest that cash mob-like mechanisms can help to solve social dilemmas like sustainable consumption with entirely private solutions (not based on punishment like taxes but on positive action), and with no costs for government budgets.

【 授权许可】

Free