This paper shows how sustainable consumption patterns can spread within a population viaprocesses of social learning even though a strong individual learning bias may favorenvironmentally harmful products. We present a model depicting how the biased transmission ofdifferent behaviors via...

Behavioral (e.g. consumption) patterns of boundedly rational agents can lead these agents intolearning dynamics that appear to be “wasteful” in terms of well-being or welfare. Within settingsdisplaying preference endogeneity, it is however still unclear how to conceptualize well-being.This...

The possibility of the “rebound effect” to technological progress has triggered a debatein energy economics concerning the usefulness of the promotion of efficiency progress. Until now,a multitude of empirical evidence has been gathered so to assess the magnitude of the effect in thefirst...

In Germany, solar thermal systems (STS) have only diused to a minor extentyet. This paper analyzes, which demand side factors are decisive for thefurther proliferation of this environmentally benign technology. Making use ofa consumer survey in North-West Germany in 2007, we examine the...

In recent years, economists have attempted to explain the rising levels of obesitynot only in the U.S. during the last three decades but in many developed countries. Forthe most part, these economists’ models have utilized neoclassical economic tools andrelied on the conventional wisdom of...

This paper posits that significant changes in 19th century British recreational travel patternsresulted from a change in the manner in which tourists used entertaining stimuli in order to attain pleasure.Consumers no longer merely viewed arousing stimuli, but attempted to use them to produce...

This paper revisits Ernst Engel's (1857) original article in which he systematically in-vestigated the relationship between consumption expenditure and income. While he ismainly remembered today for the discovery of Engel's law, we highlight how Engel ad-dressed in a particular way the issue of...

This paper incorporates aspects of humans’ evolved cognition into a formal model of culturalevolution and scrutinizes their interactions with population-level processes. It is shown how thebiased transmission of different kinds of behavior via cultural learning processes influencesagents’...

A characteristic feature of economic development is the ever changing structure ofconsumption patterns. Reducing the explanation of this phenomenon to changingprices, finally caused by changes in the availability of goods (or characteristics),would neglect a major force driving this change, i.e....

This paper presents the computational model of consumer behaviour. We consider twosources of product specic consumer skill acquisition, termed here as learning how to consume:learning by consuming and consumer socialization. Consumers utilize these two sources inorder to derive higher valuations...