Going green: does it depend on education, gender, or income?

De Silva, Dakshina and Pownall, Rachel A. J. (2012): Going green: does it depend on education, gender, or income?

Abstract

Sustainable development entails meeting our present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. This requires us to treat economic, social and environmental aspects in an integrated way, but little is known about the nature of individual preferences towards the trade-offs involved in this effort. For the first time, we study individual preferences towards the environment, social wellbeing, and financial wellbeing using a survey of over 1400 households in the Netherlands. Using nonparametric, parametric, and matching methods, we find that gender and education are important factors for sustainability rather than income levels. Moreover results indicate that educated females put the greatest value on going green whilst being socially minded.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Sustainability, financial wellbeing, heterogenous preferences
• Subjects: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I3 - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty > I31 - General Welfare, Well-Being; Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q0 - General > Q01 - Sustainable Development; G - Financial Economics > G1 - General Financial Markets > G10 - General

References

Alessie, R., S. Hochguertel, and A. van Soest. 2004 "Ownership of Stocks and Mutual Funds: A Panel Data Analysis," Review of Economics and Statistics, 86(3): 783-796.

Baron, David P. 2001. "Private Politics, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Integrated Strategy." Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, 10(1): 7--45.

Becker, Sascha O. and Andrea Ichino. 2002. "Estimation of Average Treatment Effects based on Propensity Scores." The Stata Journal, 2002(2-4): 358-377.

Eichholtz, P., Nils Kok, and J. M. Quigley. 2010. "Doing Well by Doing Good? Green Office Buildings." American Economic Review, 100(5): 2492-2509.

Froelich, M. 2004. "Programme Evaluation with Multiple Treatments." Journal of Economic Surveys, 18(2): 181-224.

Fombrun, Charles J., and Mark Shanley. 1990. "What's in a Name? Reputation Building and Corporate Strategy." Academy of Management Journal, 33(2): 233--58.

Imbens, G.W. 2000. "The Role of Propensity Score in Estimating Dose---Response Functions", Biometrika, 87(3), 706-710.

Lechner, M. 2001. "Identification and Estimation of Causal Effects of Multiple Treatments under the Conditional Independence Assumption." In Pfeiffer, F., & Lechner, M. (Eds.), Econometric Evaluation of Labour Market Policies (pp. 43 58). Heidelberg: Physica-Verlag.

Lechner, M. 2002a. "Programme Heterogeneity and Propensity Score Matching: An Application to the Evaluation of Active Labor Market Policies," The Review of Economics and Statistics, 84(2), 205--220.

Lechner, M. 2002b. "Some practical issues in the evaluation of heterogeneous labour market programmes by matching methods." Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society), 165(1), 59-82.

Lyon, Thomas P., and John W. Maxwell. Forthcoming. "Greenwash: Corporate Environmental Disclosure under Threat of Audit." Journal of Economics and Management Strategy.

Racine J. and Q. Li. 2004. "Nonparametric estimation of regression functions with both categorical and continuous data." Journal of Econometrics, 119(1): 99-130.

Rosenbaum, P.R., and D.B. Rubin. 1983. "The Central Role of the Propensity Score in Observational Studies for Causal Effects", Biometrika, 70(1), 41-55.

Social Investment Forum. 2010. 2010 Report on Socially Responsible Investing Trends in the United States. Washington, DC: Social Investment Forum Foundation. http://www.socialinvest.org/resources/research/documents/2010TrendsES.pdf

Stevens, C. 2010. "Are Women the Key to Sustainable Development?", Sustainable Development Insights (3), 1-8. Turban, Daniel B., and Daniel W. Greening. 1997. "Corporate Social Performance and Organizational Attractiveness to Prospective Employees." Academy of Management Journal, 40(3): 658--72.

Waddock, Sandra A., and Samuel B. Graves. 1997. "The Corporate Social Performance-Financial Performance Link." Strategic Management Journal, 18(4): 303--19.