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Motivate the Crowd or Crowd-them out? The Impact of Local Government spending on the Voluntary Provision of a Green Public Good
Cities are increasingly hold accountable for climate action. By demonstrating their pro-environmentality through own climate-related activities, they not at least aspire to encourage individual climate protection efforts. Based on standard economic theory there is little reason to assume that this i...
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| Published in: | MAGKS - Joint Discussion Paper Series in Economics (Band 33-2022) |
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| Main Authors: | , |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2022
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | PDF Full Text |
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| Summary: | Cities are increasingly hold accountable for climate action. By demonstrating their pro-environmentality through own climate-related activities, they not at least aspire to encourage individual climate protection efforts. Based on standard economic theory there is little reason to assume that this is a promising strategy. Financed by taxpayers’ money, cities’ contributions are considered as substitutes that crowd-out private contributions to the same public good. Inspired by research on providing information on reference group behavior, we challenge this argument and conduct a framed-field experiment to analyze the impact of reference group information on the voluntary provision of a green public good. We investigate whether information on previous contributions by fellow citizens or the city affect individual contributions. We do not find statistical evidence that city-level information crowds-out additional individual contributions. A reference to fellow citizens significantly increases the share of contributors as it attracts subjects that are not per-se pro-environmentally oriented. |
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| Physical Description: | 35 Pages |
| ISSN: | 1867-3678 |
| DOI: | 10.17192/es2024.0740 |