Study with participation of University of Cologne economist finds that many air travellers more readily choose faster, but more expensive carbon offsetting options online if selecting a slower option requires action.
Study with participation of University of Cologne economist finds that many air travellers more readily choose faster, but more expensive carbon offsetting options online if selecting a slower option requires action. However, the readiness to do so decreases the greater the gap between the most and the least expensive option gets / publication in ‘Nature Human Behaviour’
The defaults on a carbon offsetting website can cause a large percentage of customers to select faster CO2 compensation, even if this entails higher costs. In cooperation with a web portal offering carbon offsetting, a research team at the University of Bern with the participation of Professor Dr Axel Ockenfels at the University of Cologne explored the question of the costs at which people are still willing to accept so called defaults. Defaults are options that kick in automatically if we do not explicitly reject them. The study has been published in Nature Human Behaviour.
Nudging is one popular tool in behavioural economics. Defaults are widely used, for example in the case of automatically being registered as an organ donor in certain countries if one does not actively object, on in the case of power supply contracts. A default regulates what happens if one does nothing. This effect is also employed in climate protection. In Switzerland, for example, many customers automatically receive green energy in a power supply contract if they do not explicitly object.
Read more at: University of Cologne
