WiE Brown Bag Seminar - November

Join us for our fifth session featuring Luisa Lorè, a fifth-year PhD candidate at University of Innsbruck at the Department if the Credence Goods, Incentives and Behavior.

Environmental costs in second-hand clothing purchase: A voucher choice experiment

Abstract: 

The economic and psychological literature on second-hand consumption has identified specific drivers and barriers on the part of consumers. One of such barriers is consumers’ lack of awareness about the environmental costs entailed by producing new goods. Generally, awareness is raised through labels reporting CO2 emissions. Yet, consumers state that they find it difficult to interpret such information, prompting one to consider alternative metrics. In this paper, we investigate how intention to engage in second-hand clothing consumption varies when the environmental production cost refers to CO2, electric energy, or water. Intention was measured both in a self-reported fashion as well as via a choice between vouchers for first- vs. second-hand clothes, which we administered to a large, nationally representative sample…