No abstract

Altruism, Eco-labels, Duopoly, Environmental policy, D11, D21, L15,

According to the so-called ‘self-licensing effect’, committing to a virtuous act in a preceding choice may lead to behave less virtuously in the succeeding decision. Consequently, well-intentioned policies can lead to overall counter-productive effects by licensing people to behave badly in related behaviors. On the other side, motivational crowding theory argues that constraining people to adopt a desirable behavior can backfire. We use of a classroom experiment to test whether a regulatory framework to incentivize individuals to adopt pro-environmental behavior generate similar spillovers in terms of licensing effect than a non-regulatory framework. We show that the way the good deed is caused doesn’t seem to influence the licensing effect. Nevertheless, we found that business- and environmental-orientated majors react adversely to the regulatory framework. We show that environmental-orientated students exhibit higher intrinsically motivations than business-orientated ones. Accordingly, we suggest that the licensing effect is more likely to arise when the preceding ‘virtuous’ act is freely chosen (respectively regulatory caused) for non-intrinsically (respectively intrinsically) motivated individuals

No abstract

Firms increasingly develop partnerships with non-profit organizations (NPO) to support a cause and improve their corporate image. This type of Corporate Social Responsibility, called Cause-Related Marketing, commits firms to fund associations that encourage environmental protection, international development, and other causes by donating part of their profits. In this article, we argue that when cause-related marketing is applied to products with a negative externality, these a priori win-win arrangements can generate adverse and unexpected effects. We consider a vertical differentiation model integrating two assumptions. First, consumers may perceive the firm's contribution to be higher than the actual donation. Second, consumers who value highly socially responsible behavior may prefer not to consume rather than consuming products that aren't socially responsible. In this set-up we identify several possible counter-productive effects such as the likelihood of increase of the externality and the crowding out of direct contributions. We also draw policy and managerial implications.

No abstract

No abstract

"Gilles Grolleau and Naoufel Mzoughi thank the research programme ‘GESSOL’, sponsored by the French Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy"The economic literature has devoted relatively strong attention to eco-labelling schemes. Nevertheless, while succeeding in some markets, they often fall short of their promises. We analyse the gap between the academic design of eco-labelling schemes and their real implementation. We contend that providing information is not enough. We then use recent advances in behavioural economics to inform policy makers on the potential of behavioural interventions in order to design better eco-labelling schemes. Policy relevance Many public policies, including eco-labelling schemes, are still based on an inaccurate description of human decision making, mainly borrowed from standard economics. However, numerous psychological and behavioural studies show that people reg-ularly behave in ways that contradict some standard assumptions of economic analysis. Departing from the conventional view that information-based policies such as eco-labelling schemes will quasi-automatically help mitigate issues such as climate change by guiding consumers' and firms decisions, we argue that information provision is necessary but not sufficient. Admitting that consumers' decisions are guided by factors other than price and information, and, taking systematically into account be-havioural biases can offer to policy makers low-cost levers with first-order effects in order to increase the environmental per-formance of eco-labels, or at least decrease the likelihood of counterproductive effects