Online purchasing creates opportunities to lower the life cycle carbon footprints of consumer products
- 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
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.
- Research Organization:
- National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE; NREL Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC36-08GO28308
- OSTI ID:
- 1295942
- Alternate ID(s):
- OSTI ID: 1320388
- Report Number(s):
- NREL/JA-6A80-65496
- Journal Information:
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Journal Name: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Vol. 113 Journal Issue: 35; ISSN 0027-8424
- Publisher:
- Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Web of Science
Similar Records
Using augmented reality to inform consumer choice and lower carbon footprints
Will consumers benefit from new power era?