Research

We study how the structure of the decision environment—specifically, the common knowledge distribution of quality—affects voluntary disclosure behaviors and beliefs. In an online sender-receiver game mimicking the rental housing market, we experimentally vary the granularity and shape of this distribution. Standard theory predicts no effect, but we find that these features significantly alter both behaviors and beliefs. Participants systematically anchor on the mean of the distribution, a bias that impedes unraveling. This “bias-to-the-mean” emerges in both senders and receivers and intensifies when the mean is more salient (e.g., under normal distributions). Our findings reveal how the decision environment distorts strategic disclosure.

Greenwashing is a widespread phenomenon rooted in information gaps and lack of transparency at the business level. In the electricity sector, firms hold private information on their actual environmental performance, while external stakeholders must rely on disclosed claims. This paper contributes to the literature in two main ways. First, it introduces a new way to quantify greenwashing in the electricity sector by combining textual content from company websites with data on the share of renewable sources in their fuel mix. Second, it identifies the firm-level characteristics associated with greenwashing behavior, with a particular focus on the link between economic performance and greenwashing activity. The results show that, while greenwashing is not widespread, it remains present among a subset of electricity providers. Companies that primarily operate in the electric sector are less prone to engage in greenwashing, while smaller firms show a higher likelihood of doing so. These findings deliver valuable insights to academic audience, policymakers and relevant stakeholders.

Residential electricity demand is shaped by a variety of behavioral, structural, geographic, and demographic factors and, as such, it is highly context dependent. This study provides a novel contribution by estimating the price elasticity of electricity demand for Italian households under time-of-use (ToU) tariffs. We first compute the total short-run elasticity of demand and then further investigate substitution patterns across hours of the day. Our results suggest that while electricity consumption is relatively inelastic to price changes, several contextual factors help explain consumption patterns. We also find some price responsiveness across peak and off-peak hours. Based on preliminary evidence, we believe that raising consumer awareness and providing clearer information on prices may be effective in promoting electricity savings and shifting demand away from peak periods.

Boosting pro-environmental behaviour and knowing how to motivate it is crucial for addressing environmental crises. This study aims to identify individual profiles with a greater propensity for pro-environmental actions and to explore the arguments that can effectively nudge such behaviours. We designed a survey with three vignette-based experimental scenarios involving 829 Italian high school students, focusing on their willingness to reduce consumption in three key areas: meat, water, and fast-fashion clothing. 

We tested their association with two information treatments - a socio-environmental treatment emphasizing environmental and societal impacts, and an individual-economic treatment focusing on personal consequences - compared to a control group that received no additional information. We also considered the variations in responses based on specific individual attention and environmental awareness. Our findings highlight three main outcomes: (i) information treatments generally have a positive effect on intentions to reduce personal consumption compared to the control group; (ii) socio-environmental arguments perform at least as well as, and often better than, the individual-economic considerations in reducing consumption; (iii) treatment effects vary significantly across individual profiles, highlighting the necessity for youth-targeted information campaigns that emphasise socio-environmental impacts while tailoring messages to align with specific individual characteristics.

Sensitivity to biases in decision-making and preference formation is a well recognized vulnerability in human behavior. In particular, information framing can meaningfully shape individual judgments and choices, often leading to departures from optimal decision-making. This study presents experimental evidence on adolescents’ sensitivity to three distinct sources of bias: social information, numerical framing, and gender-based authority cues. The survey was administered to a sample of Italian high school students (N = 500). The results show that individuals are already susceptible at a young age to systematic distortions in how information is interpreted and used. These findings highlight the importance of targeted educational and policy interventions aimed at reducing the influence of such biases and fostering more informed decision-making among youth.