Fredrik Carlsson

Shifting individual behaviour is an important tool for addressing environmental issues and there is a wide literature evaluating interventions to encourage pro-environmental behaviour. One important question is the effect of combining interventions to affect behaviour. In this paper, we evaluate the effects of two interventions – a monetary incentive and an information nudge targeting intrinsic motivation – on nature restoration volunteering. We use a two-by-two treatment design to evaluate the individual and combined effects of the interventions in a field experiment setting. We find that neither the monetary incentive nor the information nudge alone are effective at shifting behaviour. However, there are considerable positive synergies between the monetary incentive and nudge. The monetary incentive becomes more than twice as effective when it is combined with an information nudge. Our results have important policy implications, showing that concerns around motivation crowding out from monetary incentives could be mitigated by simple, low-cost information nudges targeting intrinsic motivation.

We use a choice experiment to investigate the support for climate leadership among representative panels of citizens in seven European countries. We find that people tend to be conditional cooperators and are more positive about their country being a climate leader if assured that other countries will follow suit. At realistic cost levels, a majority oppose their country taking the lead, and most do not expect that taking the lead will result in other countries following suit. The lack of support is explained by expectations that such leadership will result in other countries free riding. One important implication of our study is that coordination at the European Union level, as demonstrated by the Fit for 55 package, is essential.

We report laboratory evidence on the voluntary provision of threshold public goods when the exact location of the threshold is not known. Our experimental treatments explicitly compare two prominent technologies, summation, and weakest link. Uncertainty in threshold location is particularly detrimental to threshold attainment under weakest link, where low contributions by one subject cannot be compensated by others. In contrast, threshold uncertainty does not affect contributions under summation. We demonstrate that non-binding pledges improve the chances of threshold attainment under both technologies, particularly under weakest link.

We provide the first estimates of how pro-environmental consumers reduce their total carbon footprint using a carbon calculator that covers all financial transactions. We use data from Swedish users of a carbon calculator that includes weekly estimates of users’ consumption-based carbon-equivalent emissions based on detailed financial statements, official registers, and self-reported lifestyle factors. The calculator is designed to induce behavioral change and gives users detailed information about their footprint. By using a robust difference-in-differences analysis with staggered adoption of the calculator, we estimate that users decrease their carbon footprint by around 10% in the first few weeks, but over the next few weeks, the reduction fades. Further analysis suggests that the carbon footprint reduction is driven by a combination of a shift from high- to low-emitting consumption categories and a temporary decrease in overall spending, and not by changes in any specific consumption category.

Digital transformation is dramatically changing the provisioning of public sector services. As such, it has moved from an added channel to fundamentally reshaping the public sector. Albeit transformative, this increased utilization of digital solutions is not equally distributed within the sector. Much has been written about the digital divide and how the shift to digital services marginalizes groups of citizens, yet less is known about the differences inferred through uneven digital transformation across municipalities. While certain municipalities have been quick to adopt digital solutions, others fall behind, increasing the performance spread and significantly challenging the notion of equal access to public sector services. In this study, we explore a revelatory case of inter-municipal collaboration targeted at counteracting this growing inequality among citizens belonging to two different municipalities. We find that collective digital transformation is enacted with a strong emphasis on assuring the complementarity rather than homogeneity of the two involved parties. This finding is discussed from the perspective of institutional work and collective ambidexterity to identify future research opportunities in the study of collective digital transformation.

Digital transformation is argued to entail fundamental change in existing operations and strategy alike. In the public sector, there have been ample evidence of both the profound effect of digital transformation and its substantial caveats. As organizations embark on digital transformation, they formulate and execute what is referred to as digital transformation strategies. In this study, we approach the digital transformation strategies of municipalities as the resource allocation and goal setting associated with digital transformation. Through a population level content analysis, we analyze the top steering documents of all 290 Swedish municipalities over two years (2021-2022). The findings display a shift to more and more emphasis on external (as opposed to internal) direct aspired value and innovation (as opposed to efficiency) activities in the sector. We interpret this through three extant theories of drift, with the goal of exploring how theories of drift may inform the future study of digital transformation strategies in the public sector.

We study distributional preferences in adolescent peer networks. Using incentivized choices between allocations for themselves and a passive agent, children are classified into efficiency-loving, inequality-loving, inequality-averse, and spiteful types. We find that pairs of students who report a friendship link are more likely to exhibit the same preference type than other students who attend the same school. The relation between types is almost completely driven by inequality-loving and spiteful types. The role of peer networks in explaining distributional preferences goes beyond network composition effects. A low rank in academic performance and a central position within the network relate positively to a higher likelihood of being classified as spiteful. Hence, social hierarchies seem to be correlated with distributional preference types.

Trust in institutions is important for economic prosperity. We present results from a field study where we compare stated trust in institutions in general, stated trust in employees at institutions, and amount sent to employees at institutions using a trust game. Including more than 250 entrepreneurs in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, we examine levels of trust towards entrepreneurship development agency, district administration, tax authority, and electric utility. There is a positive and sizeable significant correlation between stated trust and trust game. Furthermore, we find that generalized trust is weakly correlated with trust in specific institutions both compared with stated trust, and trust game. Given the large heterogeneity in levels of trust to specific institutions, we argue it is important to elicit institution-specific levels of trust.

This article discusses the use of green nudges—behavioral interventions aimed at reducing negative externalities—as an environmental policy instrument. We present a new framework for classi...