U.S. Department of EnergyOffice of Scientific and Technical Information
Online purchasing creates opportunities to lower the life cycle carbon footprints of consumer products
Abstract
A major barrier to transitions to environmental sustainability is that consumers lack information about the full environmental footprints of their purchases. Sellers' incentives do not support reducing the footprints unless customers have such information and are willing to act on it. We explore the potential of modern information technology to lower this barrier by enabling firms to inform customers of products' environmental footprints at the point of purchase and easily offset consumers' contributions through bundled purchases of carbon offsets. Using online stated choice experiments, we evaluated the effectiveness of several inexpensive features that firms in four industries could implement with existing online user interfaces for consumers. These examples illustrate the potential for firms to lower their overall carbon footprints while improving customer satisfaction by lowering the 'soft costs' to consumers of pro-environmental choices. Lastly, opportunities such as these likely exist wherever firms possess environmentally relevant data not accessible to consumers or when transaction costs make pro-environmental action difficult.
- Authors:
-
- National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO 80401,
- Board on Environmental Change and Society, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Washington, DC 20001,, Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7491 Trondheim, Norway
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE; NREL Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1295942
- Alternate Identifier(s):
- OSTI ID: 1320388
- Report Number(s):
- NREL/JA-6A80-65496
Journal ID: ISSN 0027-8424
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC36-08GO28308
- Resource Type:
- Journal Article: Published Article
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Name: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Journal Volume: 113 Journal Issue: 35; Journal ID: ISSN 0027-8424
- Publisher:
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY; carbon footprint; online experiments; carbon offset; ecolabels; consumer behavior
Citation Formats
Isley, Steven C., Stern, Paul C., Carmichael, Scott P., Joseph, Karun M., and Arent, Douglas J. Online purchasing creates opportunities to lower the life cycle carbon footprints of consumer products. United States: N. p., 2016.
Web. doi:10.1073/pnas.1522211113.
Isley, Steven C., Stern, Paul C., Carmichael, Scott P., Joseph, Karun M., & Arent, Douglas J. Online purchasing creates opportunities to lower the life cycle carbon footprints of consumer products. United States. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1522211113
Isley, Steven C., Stern, Paul C., Carmichael, Scott P., Joseph, Karun M., and Arent, Douglas J. 2016.
"Online purchasing creates opportunities to lower the life cycle carbon footprints of consumer products". United States. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1522211113.
@article{osti_1295942,
title = {Online purchasing creates opportunities to lower the life cycle carbon footprints of consumer products},
author = {Isley, Steven C. and Stern, Paul C. and Carmichael, Scott P. and Joseph, Karun M. and Arent, Douglas J.},
abstractNote = {A major barrier to transitions to environmental sustainability is that consumers lack information about the full environmental footprints of their purchases. Sellers' incentives do not support reducing the footprints unless customers have such information and are willing to act on it. We explore the potential of modern information technology to lower this barrier by enabling firms to inform customers of products' environmental footprints at the point of purchase and easily offset consumers' contributions through bundled purchases of carbon offsets. Using online stated choice experiments, we evaluated the effectiveness of several inexpensive features that firms in four industries could implement with existing online user interfaces for consumers. These examples illustrate the potential for firms to lower their overall carbon footprints while improving customer satisfaction by lowering the 'soft costs' to consumers of pro-environmental choices. Lastly, opportunities such as these likely exist wherever firms possess environmentally relevant data not accessible to consumers or when transaction costs make pro-environmental action difficult.},
doi = {10.1073/pnas.1522211113},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1295942},
journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America},
issn = {0027-8424},
number = 35,
volume = 113,
place = {United States},
year = {Mon Aug 15 00:00:00 EDT 2016},
month = {Mon Aug 15 00:00:00 EDT 2016}
}
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