[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tse/wpaper/129130.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

When Nudges Backfire: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment to Boost Biological Pest Control

Author

Listed:
  • Chabé-Ferret, Sylvain
  • Le Coent, Philippe
  • Lefebvre, Caroline
  • Salanié, François
  • Subervie, Julie
  • Thoyer, Sophie
  • Préget, Raphaele
Abstract
Nudges are increasingly used to alter the behavior of economic agents as an alternative to monetary incentives. However, little is known as to whether nudges can backfire, that is, how and when they may generate effects opposite to those they intend to achieve. We provide the first field evidence of a nudge that is designed to encourage pro-environmental behavior, which instead backfires. We randomly allocate a social comparison nudge inviting winegrowers to adopt biological pest control as an alternative to chemical pesticide use. We find that our nudge decreases by half the adoption of biological pest control among the largest vineyards, where the bulk of adoption occurs. We show that this result can be rationalized in an economic model where winegrowers and winegrower-cooperative man-agers bargain over future rents generated by the adoption of biological pest control. This study highlights the importance of experimenting on a small scale with nudges aimed at encouraging adoption of virtuous behaviors in order to detect unexpected adverse effects, particularly in contexts where negotiations on the sharing of the costs of adoption are likely to occur.

Suggested Citation

  • Chabé-Ferret, Sylvain & Le Coent, Philippe & Lefebvre, Caroline & Salanié, François & Subervie, Julie & Thoyer, Sophie & Préget, Raphaele, 2024. "When Nudges Backfire: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment to Boost Biological Pest Control," TSE Working Papers 24-1512, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    • Handle: RePEc:tse:wpaper:129130
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.tse-fr.eu/sites/default/files/TSE/documents/doc/wp/2024/wp_tse_1512.pdf
    File Function: Full Text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Clee, Mona A & Wicklund, Robert A, 1980. "Consumer Behavior and Psychological Reactance," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 6(4), pages 389-405, March.
    2. Ian Ayres & Sophie Raseman & Alice Shih, 2013. "Evidence from Two Large Field Experiments that Peer Comparison Feedback Can Reduce Residential Energy Usage," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 29(5), pages 992-1022, October.
    3. Alberto Abadie & Susan Athey & Guido W Imbens & Jeffrey M Wooldridge, 2023. "When Should You Adjust Standard Errors for Clustering?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 138(1), pages 1-35.
    4. Gosnell, Greer & Metcalfe, Robert & List, John A, 2016. "A new approach to an age-old problem: solving externalities by incenting workers directly," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 84331, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Saurabh Bhargava & Dayanand Manoli, 2015. "Psychological Frictions and the Incomplete Take-Up of Social Benefits: Evidence from an IRS Field Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(11), pages 3489-3529, November.
    6. Dietrich Earnhart & Paul J. Ferraro, 2021. "The Effect of Peer Comparisons on Polluters: A Randomized Field Experiment among Wastewater Dischargers," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 79(4), pages 627-652, August.
    7. Ivan A. Canay & Joseph P. Romano & Azeem M. Shaikh, 2017. "Randomization Tests Under an Approximate Symmetry Assumption," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85, pages 1013-1030, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. SASAKI, Hiroki & HORIE, Shinya & HORIE, Tetsuya & TANAKA, Katsuya, 2024. "Assessing the Effects of Nudge and Boost for Methane Emission Reduction from Paddy Field- Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial in Japan," IAAE 2024 Conference, August 2-7, 2024, New Delhi, India 344318, International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bhanot, Syon P., 2017. "Rank and response: A field experiment on peer information and water use behavior," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 155-172.
    2. Eszter Czibor & David Jimenez‐Gomez & John A. List, 2019. "The Dozen Things Experimental Economists Should Do (More of)," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 86(2), pages 371-432, October.
    3. Johannes W. Ligtenberg, 2023. "Inference in IV models with clustered dependence, many instruments and weak identification," Papers 2306.08559, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2024.
    4. Kandul, Serhiy & Lanz, Bruno, 2021. "Public good provision, in-group cooperation and out-group descriptive norms: A lab experiment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    5. Abdel Sater, Rita & Perona, Mathieu & huillery, elise & Chevallier, Coralie, 2021. "The effectiveness of personalised versus generic information in changing behaviour: Evidence from an indoor air quality experiment," SocArXiv kw3tn, Center for Open Science.
    6. Bruno Ferman, 2023. "Inference in difference‐in‐differences: How much should we trust in independent clusters?," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(3), pages 358-369, April.
    7. Cerruti, Davide & Daminato, Claudio & Filippini, Massimo, 2023. "The impact of policy awareness: Evidence from vehicle choices response to fiscal incentives," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 226(C).
    8. Roth, Jonathan & Sant’Anna, Pedro H.C. & Bilinski, Alyssa & Poe, John, 2023. "What’s trending in difference-in-differences? A synthesis of the recent econometrics literature," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 235(2), pages 2218-2244.
    9. Wang, Wenjie & Zhang, Yichong, 2024. "Wild bootstrap inference for instrumental variables regressions with weak and few clusters," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 241(1).
    10. Christophe Charlier & Gilles Guerassimoff & Ankinée Kirakozian & Sandrine Selosse, 2021. "Under Pressure! Nudging Electricity Consumption within Firms. Feedback from a Field Experiment," The Energy Journal, , vol. 42(1), pages 129-154, January.
    11. Jason B. Cook & Chloe N. East, 2023. "The Effect of Means-Tested Transfers on Work: Evidence from Quasi-Randomly Assigned SNAP Caseworkers," NBER Working Papers 31307, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. MacKinnon, James G. & Nielsen, Morten Ørregaard & Webb, Matthew D., 2023. "Cluster-robust inference: A guide to empirical practice," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 232(2), pages 272-299.
    13. Irani Arráiz & Syon P. Bhanot & Carla Calero, 2020. "When the context backfires: Experimental evidence on Reciprocity," Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), vol. 4(1), pages 29-42, December.
    14. Andrieş, Alin Marius & Walker, Sarah, 2023. "When the message hurts: The unintended impacts of nudges on saving," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 439-456.
    15. Yong Cai, 2021. "Panel Data with Unknown Clusters," Papers 2106.05503, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2022.
    16. Rita Abdel Sater, 2021. "Essays on the application of behavioural insights to environmental policy [Essais sur l’application des connaissances comportementales aux politiques environnementales]," SciencePo Working papers tel-03450909, HAL.
    17. James G. MacKinnon & Matthew D. Webb, 2020. "When and How to Deal with Clustered Errors in Regression Models," Working Paper 1421, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    18. Rita Abdel Sater, 2021. "Essays on the application of behavioural insights to environmental policy [Essais sur l’application des connaissances comportementales aux politiques environnementales]," SciencePo Working papers Main tel-03450909, HAL.
    19. Luis Alvarez & Bruno Ferman, 2020. "Inference in Difference-in-Differences with Few Treated Units and Spatial Correlation," Papers 2006.16997, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2023.
    20. Goldzahl, Léontine & Hollard, Guillaume & Jusot, Florence, 2018. "Increasing breast-cancer screening uptake: A randomized controlled experiment," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 228-252.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Nudges; Behavioral Economics; Pesticides; Government Policy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General
    • Q25 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Water
    • Q58 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Government Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tse:wpaper:129130. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/tsetofr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.