Nudging pro-environmental behavior: evidence from a web experiment on priming and WTP

Investigations on state-dependent and endogenous preferences have gained momentum. There is now abundant empirical literature on whether, and how, external stimuli influence or predict people’s behavior and appraisals. In recent decades, attempts have been made to enlarge this strand of research to determine whether “nudging” may help in managing environmental problems and boosting social preferences. Following this line of investigation, we describe a web experiment to analyze the impact of priming on environmental and ethical attitudes and willingness to pay (WTP) for environmental protection. We found that while priming does make pro-environmental attitudes more salient, its frame affects the probability of WTP a premium for environment-friendly goods and the size of the premium. Unlike other authors, we used a visual priming technique based on a short video cartoon about a smartphone lifecycle.