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Value orientation and framing as determinants of stated willingness to pay for eco-labeled electricity

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Abstract

In the context of a survey, an experiment examined how egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric framing of consequences influence stated willingness to pay (SWTP) for eco-labeled electricity. The results for a random sample of 476 Swedish residents showed that SWTP decreases linearly with size of the surcharge for eco-labeled electricity, that SWPT is higher for biospheric framing than for altruistic and egoistic framing, and that SWPT does not differ for altruistic and egoistic framing. A higher SWPT is also observed for individuals with a self-transcendence value orientation than for individuals with a self-enhancement value orientation.

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Notes

  1. Although debated, nuclear power is not considered to fit the definition of eco-labeled electricity.

  2. In half of the questionnaires, instead of referring to a positive effect of choosing eco-labeled electricity, the information was changed to that of a negative effect of not choosing eco-labeled electricity (“If you do not choose eco-labeled electricity, you contribute to worsen conditions for…”). This negative framing (n = 237) did not affect the results differently than the positive framing (n = 239).

  3. Differences in subsample sizes were not statistically significant, χ 2(2) = 4.56, p = 0.103.

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Acknowledgments

This research was financially supported by grant no. 211-2006-1944 from The Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agriculture Sciences, and Spatial Planning. I thank Tommy Gärling and Anders Biel for commenting on the manuscript and Isak Barbopoulos for the assistance in collecting data.

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  1. Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg, P.O. Box 500, 40530, Göteborg, Sweden

    André Hansla

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Hansla, A. Value orientation and framing as determinants of stated willingness to pay for eco-labeled electricity. Energy Efficiency 4, 185–192 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12053-010-9096-0

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