Nudging households' sustainable investments
Results from a pilot lab-in-the-field experiment in two Italian cities
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22411896 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Beatrice Bertelli (0000-0003-1096-1617, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia), Marianna Brunetti (0000-0002-5332-1348, University of Rome Tor Vergata, corresponding author), Costanza Torricelli (0000-0001-5927-2578, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia), Mariangela Zoli (0000-0002-4362-1419, University of Rome Tor Vergata) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 104 |
| Pages | 102405 |
| Publication date | 2026-04-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Socio-Economic Planning Sciences (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0038-0121 • E-ISSN: 1873-6041 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.seps.2025.102405 |
| OpenAlex | W4417072953 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 57 |
This paper investigates households' willingness to pay for sustainable investments using evidence from a pilot lab-in-the-field experiment run in different branches of a large Italian bank. The analysis reveals three main results. First, the willingness to pay is lower for graduated individuals, higher for those with a medium investment horizon, for those engaged in volunteering and for those concerned about climate change. Second, the exposure to a negative (vs. positive) visual treatment, causes an average increase in the willingness to pay for Environmental, Social, and Governance assets, albeit this effect vanishes once controls are added. Third, when dissecting results by the factor of interest, the negative visual treatment significantly increases the willingness to pay among the investors interested in the Environmental dimension only. This suggests that, with suitable leverage, the demand and willingness to pay for all sustainability dimensions can be nudged, with important industry and policy implications.
Corporate governance · Dimension (graph theory) · Investment (military) · Sustainability · Sustainable development · Willingness to accept · Willingness to pay · Economic and Environmental Valuation · Environmental Sustainability in Business · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
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Multiple Switching and Data Quality in the Multiple Price List
Multiple price lists for willingness to pay elicitation
What Do Laboratory Experiments Measuring Social Preferences Reveal About the Real World
| Highly cited | No |
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