Abstract

Households’ consumption patterns and behaviors have profound influence on natural resources and environmental quality. This paper explores whether environmental behaviors and willingness to pay (WTP) in the household domains transport, energy consumption and water consumption are substitutes or complements. Using a cross-country data set from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Survey on Environmental Attitudes and Behavior from 2008, a random-effects (ordered) probit model is used to answer this question for the following countries: Australia, Canada, France, Mexico, Italy, and South Korea. It is found that in most countries, actual environmental behaviors are substitutes, while WTP for environmental public goods in different domains is mostly complementary. Grounding in these results, policies aiming to encourage overall environmentally friendly lifestyles should therefore be all-encompassing of several public domains, instead of individual ones, to avoid the risk of negative spillovers.

Keywords

impure public goods; private provision of public goods; pro-environmental behavior; renewable energy; willingness to pay

Published in

Environmental Economics
2019, Volume: 10, number: 1, pages: 23-47
Publisher: LLC CPC Business Perspectives

SLU Authors

• Schusser, Sandra

  • Department of Forest Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Bostedt, Göran

  • Department of Forest Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    
  • Umeå University

UKÄ Subject classification

Economics
Social Sciences Interdisciplinary


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21511/ee.10(1).2019.03

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/129928