The challenge of achieving low-carbon communities cannot be underestimated. While government policies set ambitious targets for carbon-reduction over the next 40 years, there remains an urgent need for tools and initiatives to deliver these reductions through behaviour-change among individuals,...

Ecological Citizenship is a potentially ethic-based motivation for changing behaviour towards more sustainable lifestyles. It describes citizenship as activity taken in the private as well as public sphere, and with regard to a common humanity transcending the boundaries of nation states. This...

In the climate policy debate, a rhetoric has evolved that attributes a high potential to "voluntary climate action". We turn to the population of Germany, the fourth largest cumulative GHG emitter, to obtain an Internet-)representative estimate of the individual willingness to abate one ton of...

Striking gender gaps persist in fundamental aspects of human welfare. In India, the setting of this paper, these gaps are particularly large. Interventions often target adolescent girls with the aim of empowering them to make choices that go against the status quo - to remain in school longer or...

We investigate the life cycle patterns of households’spending on medium value durables. We use panel data on expenditures on appliances and consumer electronics the British Household Panel Study between 1997 and 2008. In cross section, expenditures for appliances and consumer electronics...

Microeconomic theory predicts that under certain regularity conditions higher idiosyncratic risk increases the propensity to insure against independent marketable risks. We apply these predictions to the specific case of labor income risk and car insurance using data from the UK. The main...

Replacing combustion engine vehicles with battery electric vehicles (BEV) is essential to achieving climate objectives and advancing sustainable transportation, aligning with the United Nations Development Goals and the Paris Agreement. In this project, we identify three perception biases linked...

Vor dem kommenden UN-Klimagipfel in Kopenhagen blickt die Welt vor allem auf die USA. Sie sind neben China mit Abstand der größte Emittent von Treibhausgasen. Spürbare Fortschritte beim globalen Klimaschutz setzen einen erheblichen Beitrag der Amerikaner voraus. Spielraum für eine deutliche...

Eine aktuelle Untersuchung der Entwicklung der erneuerbaren Energien in Deutschland unterstreicht ihre Bedeutung als wichtiger Wirtschaftsfaktor. Im Jahr 2009 wurden gut 20 Milliarden Euro in erneuerbare Energien investiert. Die Umsätze der in Deutschland ansässigen Hersteller belaufen sich...

With the liberalisation of the European electricity market, new instruments are searched for in order to co-ordinate climate change initiatives with competition. This paper analyses the potential of a system of green electricity certificates to regulate the introduction of renewable energy...