Research

• Risk preferences and pro-environmental attitudes. An experiment, joint work with Wael Bousselmi and Patricia Crifo, submitted in March 2023.
  
  Abstract: This study experimentally investigates the relationship between the nature and consistency of risk preferences and individuals’ pro-environmental attitudes, assessed through a comprehensive survey encompassing daily habits, viewpoints, and socio-demographic factors. Risk preferences are elicited using two distinct methods: a single-choice list, as in Binswanger (1978), and an investment task, as in Gneezy and Potters (1997). Our findings reveal a positive correlation between risk aversion and pro-environmental attitudes. Furthermore, we demonstrate that risk preferences exhibit partial stability across methods due to a random behavior of some respondents. Finally, we provide novel evidence on the implications of this partial stability for pro-environmental preferences, demonstrating that greater consistency in risk preferences is associated with a reduced intention-behavior gap in green actions. These results contribute to the literature on behavioral economics and environmental decision-making by highlighting the role of risk preference consistency in shaping pro-environmental engagement
  
  

• The effect of energy-saving nudges according to consumer profiles. A lab-in-the field experiment, joint work with Wael Bousselmi and Patricia Crifo

Abstract: Nudges like Home Energy Reports have been shown to reduce energy use, but their impact is highly heterogeneous. We provide one of the first experimental explanation of this heterogeneity through a year-long field experiment with 150 students living in 82 apartments, combining detailed heat consumption data with survey and experimental measures of pro-environmental attitudes and economic preferences. We find that HERs reduce average heat consumption by around 7%, consistent with the upper range of existing estimates. Yet, households with stronger pro-environmental attitudes—already consuming less than their peers—reduced usage by nearly 25% more, while the highest-consuming households showed no reduction or even an increase. These findings suggest that social-comparison nudges may act as a form of “moral tax,” affecting individuals unevenly across the consumption distribution and raising important questions about fairness in the design of energy efficiency policies

• The reputation cost of going green, joint work with Chloé Saurel