Luis Mundaca
Professor
Assessing the impacts of social norms on low-carbon mobility options
Author
Summary, in English
Policymakers and scientists are paying increasing attention to how social norms can promote pro-environmental behaviour and sustainable energy use. We contribute to this field by experimenting with and assessing the impacts of social norms on low-carbon mobility options. Taking Sweden as a case study, we develop two complementary randomised controlled experiments to: 1) analyse the role of social norms in promoting the adoption of car sharing services (CSS) via descriptive and injunctive norms (N = 720); and 2) investigate potential crowd out effects when injunctive norms are used to promote a low-carbon transport hierarchy (N = 730). First-order effects show that social norms have a positive but marginal impact on the willingness to adopt CSS, and only injunctive norms have the potential to steer behaviour in the desired direction. Results also suggest that concerns about potential substitution effects between low-carbon transport options and CSS are not valid. With due limitations, our findings have various implications for policymaking, notably that for social norms to be effective, other policy instruments are critically needed. Of particular importance are the environmental effectiveness of CSS and complementarities between public transport and active mobility (i.e. walking and cycling).
Department/s
- The International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics
Publishing year
2022-03
Language
English
Publication/Series
Energy Policy
Volume
162
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Elsevier
Topic
- Environmental Sciences
Keywords
- Active mobility
- Behavioural economics
- Car sharing
- Energy and climate policy
- Low-carbon transport
- Social norms
- Sweden
Status
Published
Project
- Sharing Behaviour
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0301-4215