Pro-Environmental Behaviour in an Online Experiment

Description

This dataset contains the experimental data used in the article "Intrinsic Motivation, Monetary Incentives and Real Recycling: Heterogeneous Pro-Environmental Behaviour in an Online Experiment" (Planells and Hernández, submitted to Sustainability). The experiment was conducted online in 2022 by the Laboratory for Research in Experimental and Behavioral Economics (LINEEX), Universitat de València, and programmed in oTree. 101 participants took part in four sessions. Research question: does intrinsic pro-environmental motivation exist when it has a monetary cost, and are the critical values at which individuals behave pro-environmentally universal or do they depend on the policy design? Each participant faced 16 policies, one per round, crossing four levels of a cost of collaborating with the policy (CC = 0, 0.2, 0.75, 1.5 euros) with four levels of a benefit (θ = 0, 0.5, 1, 2.5 euros). In each round they decided (1) whether to collaborate with the policy and (2) whether to carry out a binding real action: recycling plastic bottles. Choosing to recycle deferred the whole payment of the round until the participant brought bottles to the LINEEX laboratory. Two rounds were randomly selected for payment. Files: Datos_S1yS2.xlsx: decisions in the policy task (101 participants × 16 rounds = 1616 rows), with the policy parameters (player.policy_cost, player.policy_benefit), the decisions (player.collaborate, player.recycle; 1 = yes, 0 = no), round and session identifiers, and the final questionnaire: risk attitude (lottery choice, 1 = safest to 6 = riskiest), patience index, everyday pro-environmental behaviour index, importance of climate change, whether the participant feels affected by climate change, age, gender (0 = female, 1 = male) and income bracket. transporte.xlsx: incentivised multiple price list on commuting (car vs. bicycle); the switching row from the low-impact to the high-impact option measures willingness to pay for the environmentally friendly option. Datos_rondas_pagos.xlsx: rounds randomly selected for payment for each participant. Datos_reciclar_lab.xlsx: compliance with the binding action (player.recycle_lab: 0 = chose not to recycle; 1 = chose to recycle and brought the bottles; 2 = chose to recycle and did not come; missing = participant could not be identified). Files are linked through participant.code, an anonymous identifier generated by oTree. Sessions sl10mxo7 and wbkzftbq completed the policy task first; sessions fktuffhe and w3hmmxla completed the price list first. The data contain no personal identifying information.

Institutions

• Universitat de València

  Valencia, Valencia

Categories

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