Working Papers

"Does information help to overcome public resistance to carbon prices? Evidence from an information provision experiment" (with Geske Rolvering), latest version here.

Abstract: We document people’s attitudes toward climate change and carbon pricing and study whether information affect their policy views shortly before the introduction of the German carbon price. Using a survey experiment, we show that despite high climate change awareness, support for the carbon price is low. We also show that providing information about the efficiency of carbon pricing or emission levels and carbon prices outside Germany changes people’s views. Informing about distributional implications of carbon pricing is not effective. Further evidence suggests that the effectiveness of the information interventions increases with trust in the government and climate change awareness.

"Greenwashing your personality" (with Christoph Drobner and Sebastian Goerg), latest version can be found here.

Abstract: Behaving more sustainable has been shown to signal cooperativeness in social dilemmas. We investigate whether people exploit this apparent signaling value by inflating their intention to behave sustainably without changing their actual behavior. We explore this question in an online experiment in which participants self-report the importance of sustainability in their daily lives before engaging in a prisoner’s dilemma game. Using a between-subjects design, we manipulate whether participants have the opportunity to adjust their self-reported sustainability scores after receiving instructions for the game. The results show that almost 30% of participants increase their sustainability scores in anticipation of higher transfers from their matched partners. However, this greenwashing strategy proves to be unsuccessful, as higher sustainability scores do not lead to higher transfers. 

"Germany’s nationwide travel experiment in 2022: public transport for 9 Europer month - First findings of an empirical study" (with Allister Loder, Lennart Adenaw, David Ziegler, Felix Gotzler, Nico Nachtigall, Markus B. Siewert, Stefan Wurster, Sebastian Goerg, Markus Liebkamp and Klaus Bogenberger)

Abstract: In spring 2022, the German federal government agreed on a set of policy measures that aimed at reducing households' financial burden resulting from a recent price increase, especially in energy and mobility. These included among others, a nationwide public transport ticket for 9 Euro per month for three months in June, July, and August 2022. In transport policy research this is an almost unprecedented behavioral experiment. It allows us to study not only behavioral responses in mode choice and induced demand but also to assess the effectiveness of these instruments. We observe this natural experiment with a three-wave survey and a smartphone-based travel diary with passive tracking on an initial sample of 2,261 participants with a focus on the Munich metropolitan region. This area is chosen as it offers a variety of mode options with a dense and far-reaching public transport network that even provides good access to many leisure destinations. The app has been providing data from 756 participants until the end of September, the three-wave survey by 1,402, and the app and the three waves by 637 participants. In this paper, we report on the study design, the recruitment and study participation as well as the impacts of the policy measures on the self-reported and app-observed travel behavior; we present results on consumer choices for a successor ticket to the 9 Euro Ticket that started in May 2023. We find a substantial shift in the modal share towards public transport from the car in our sample during the \NineEuroTicket{} period in travel distance (around 5%) and in trip frequency (around 7%). The mobility outcomes of the 9 Euro Ticket however provide evidence that cheap public transport as a policy instrument does not suffice to incentive sustainable travel behavior choices and that other policy instruments are required in addition.