Seminario Daniel Schwartz: “Pro-environmental Consumer Behavior: Green Incentives and Motivations”

El pasado miércoles 16 de Diciembre de 2015 se llevó a cabo un seminario dictado por el Académico Daniel Schwartz, Profesor Asistente, Departamento de Ingeniería Industrial, Universidad. Este workshop se efectuó en las dependencias del Departamento de Administración, Facultad de Economía y Negocios (FEN), Universidad de Chile, al cuál asistieron académicos del Departamento de Administración, FEN, y otros académicos invitados pertenecientes a otras casas de estudios.

El tema que se desarrollo se denomina: “Pro-environmental Consumer Behavior: Green Incentives and Motivations”, el cual se puede resumir con el siguiente párrafo : “Economic incentives may be an attractive tool to promote energy conservation and pro-environmental product purchases. However, many interventions using this type of incentive may involve certain challenges, such as small amounts and crowding-out pro-environmental motivation. I present studies examining the role of monetary incentives and non-pecuniary strategies to shape pro-environmental behavior; (1) the effect of discounts and pro-environmental labels next to energy efficient and pro-environmental products – light bulbs and reusable bags – using hypothetical purchases, actual purchases in a lab setting, and a field experiment in a store. (2) The effect of rewards to encourage recycling in a field experiment. The results of these studies highlight the limited effect of economic incentives to encourage pro-environmental behavior, as well as the positive outcomes of psychological tools such as the labeling technique. Even though people state that they greatly value the utilitarian attributes of saving electricity and purchasing energy-efficient products, these findings suggest that emphasizing sustainable attributes may be more cost-effective”.