Description:

Incentivized personal carbon scores lower the carbon intensity of urban mobility and spill over to pro-science climate attitudes

Abstract:

A key challenge global society faces is how to engage the public on climate risk and educate individuals on their collective responsibility as consumers, workers, investors, and citizens. Here we test the hypothesis that introducing personalized feedback on the environmental impacts of a consumer’s frequent choices in one domain—urban mobility—can lower the carbon-intensity of those choices and spill over to environmental attitudes more generally. We recruited 330 university students into a semester-long randomized control trial. We tracked urban mobility choices and, for conditions other than a control, mapped these choices to personal carbon scores and messaged participants on the environmental co-benefits of taking public transport, including reduced carbon emissions, improved air quality, and active mobility. Participants who stood to receive rewards for low-carbon scores shifted their choices the most—away from single-rider car travel. Participants did not object to receiving personal carbon scores. We find evidence that the urban mobility intervention shifted climate change attitudes beyond the urban mobility domain. This research paves the way for a scalable fintech solution that integrates personal carbon tracking with real-time transportation choices, empowering climate leaders.

Bio: Alberto Salvo, National University of Singapore

Alberto Salvo is an Associate Professor of Economics at the National University of Singapore. He was previously at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management and affiliated with its Transportation Center. Salvo studies how the behavior and incentives of economic agents, such as households, workers, and firms, interact with scarce environmental resources, such as climate, urban air, land use, and water. Ongoing projects, many of which are in the urban travel and the air travel domains, relate to households’ awareness of the climate crisis, personal emissions accountability, and individual action. As an environmental economist and behavioral social scientist, Salvo collaborates across disciplines, including transport engineering, atmospheric sciences, environmental health, consumer psychology, marketing, and strategic communication. His work focuses on Asia’s under-studied and globally critical environment and society by partnering with industry, civil society, and government. At NUS, Salvo serves on the University Sustainability and Climate Action Council since 2022. At the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, he holds a Dean's Chair award (2022-2028). Beyond NUS, he is co-editor of the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists and a member of the editorial council at the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.