Specification Required? A Survey of Scientists’ Views About the Role of Behavioral Economics for Assessing Environmental Policy Instruments

New Perspectives for Environmental Policies Through Behavioral Economics

“…13.2 Type of environmental product innovation according to the ELVD part of the project "Ecological Perspectives of Modularisation-Exemplary Studies of Innovation Patterns" which was funded by the German Volkswagen Foundation. 6 One part of the survey explicitly aimed at analyzing the behavioral determinants of innovation in general and of environmental innovation in particular (see for further details Daskalakis , 2015. In order to identify the relevant firms and the corresponding address data as well as competent contact persons, industry publications and databases were analyzed and over 1,700 firms were contacted by telephone.…”

“…Environmental changes are manifested, for example, in the competitive structure, technological progress and uncontrollable "external shocks" (Cyert and March 2001, 118). In order to remain on the market, firms have to adapt to changes [see Levinthal and March (1981), Simon (1993); see for this and the following also Daskalakis ( , 2015]. This requires constant (but, due to bounded rationality, also limited) monitoring of (contingent) external conditions.…”

“…; but see also e.g., Bowen 2002;Corral 2002;Kok and Biemans 2009;Chen and Chang 2013;Széchy 2012). Behavioral economics in its current form and the respective policy measures derived from it usually addresses the actions of consumers, not firms (see Daskalakis 2015, Chapter 3 in this volume).…”

“…The study will thus not provide a comprehensive review of the literature on environmental innovation research nor on behavioral economics; interested readers are referred with regard to the former to Schiederig et al (2012) andde Medeiros et al (2014) with regard to the latter to Beckenbach (2015 -Chapter 2) and Daskalakis ( , 2015, Chapter 3 in this volume.…”

‘Individual Failure’ and a Behavioural Public Sector Economics

“…Indeed, there seems to be an increasingly strong consensus in the economics community that behavioural economics can help to understand why people do not respond to environmental policy measures as predicted by rational choice theory. In addition, understanding the motives and driving forces behind pro-social, pro-environmental and cooperative behaviour may help improve environmental policy design (see e.g., Daskalakis, 2016). A review of the literature recognizes at least five different areas where insights from behavioural economics may have implications for environmental policy.…”