Learning from the Irrational: A study of Environmental Preferences
Authors:
The aim of this research is to identify and explain any non-rational behaviour of people with regards to environmental goods and services. We often get to observe individual behaviour which is irrational from a neoclassical economic theory perspective as it falls short of being predicted by standard utility maximizing preferences. Rather than discarding these behaviours as non-rationalizeable one can learn from them.
Understanding the different behaviours and analysing their patters will help construct economic models with more realistic psychological foundations which in turn will help to make better predictions of people's reactions to future interventions. Theses insights can help to make environmental policies more effective and possibly widen the range of useful tools for intervention. This is work at the intersection of environmental and behavioural economics working with individual or house hold level data related to environmental goods or preferences.
This project is led by Dr.Ralf Steinhauser.
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