Do greens drive Hummers or hybrids? Environmental ideology as a determinant of consumer choice

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2007.05.001Get rights and content

Abstract

This paper uses several California data sets to test for differences in consumption patterns between greens and browns. A person's “environmentalism” is rarely observed in consumer data sets. In California, a community's share of Green Party registered voters is a viable proxy for community environmentalism. Environmentalists are more likely to commute by public transit, purchase hybrid vehicles, and consume less gasoline than non-environmentalists.

Introduction

The environmental movement has been a surprisingly effective political pressure group. It consists of a large number of private citizens and non-profit clubs who have different environmental priorities but share a common goal of protecting public property.

In the public arena, environmentalists willingly sacrifice their scarce time and financial resources to lobby for environmental protection. Does such “devotion to the cause” carryover into the private realm of personal consumer choice?

This paper focuses on environmentalists’ private consumer choices ranging from commuting modes, to annual gasoline consumption, to vehicle choice. I test whether environmentalists live a less resource intensive lifestyle than the average person. It is possible that in day-to-day life that there is no difference in consumption choices between the average “green” and the average “brown”. A “rational” environmentalist might say to herself; “I am just one person. My actions only have a negligible overall impact on environmental quality”. Such “free riding” environmentalists would be political greens but their day-to-day consumption patterns would be quite similar to the average person. An alternative possibility is that environmentalists live a “consistent” lifestyle both voting green and living green. Greens may gain utility from knowing that their ecological footprint is small. Within green communities there may be greater access to environmental friendly technologies (i.e. public transit, bike paths and organic farmers’ markets). In green communities, social pressure may reinforce the urge to take green actions such as driving a Toyota Prius. Environmentalists may also recognize that their “moral authority” in the political realm is enhanced by gaining a reputation for living a low resource intensive lifestyle and hence “practicing what they preach”. Al Gore recently faced close scrutiny over his own greenhouse gas production.1 To quote one letter writer to USA Today, “Thanks for Peter Schweizer's commentary that exposed former vice president Al Gore's hypocrisy as he says much and does little to curb his personal impact on our environment. Unfortunately, the piece didn’t make me feel much better; for I, too, am an environmental hypocrite.” (Don McAdam)2

The empirical challenge in studying whether environmentalism is an important determinant of household choice is that we rarely observe information both on household consumption patterns and household environmentalism. To get around this problem, I posit that Californians who live in communities featuring a disproportionately high share of Green Party registered voters are environmentalists. I substantiate this claim using two political data sets discussed below. After establishing that a community's Green Party share is a viable measure of community environmentalism, I then turn to documenting consumption differences between green and brown communities. Greens are more likely to use public transit to commute to work, consume fewer gallons of gasoline and are more likely to purchase hybrid vehicles.

This study contributes to two different literatures. There is great interest in comparing national ecological footprints and documenting the growth of the world's ecological footprint [24], [26]. Wackernagel et al. [24] stress that rising energy consumption is the key component driving the growth of the world's ecological footprint. Income and population growth are key drivers of rising greenhouse gas production [21]. But, nations with similar per-capita income differ with respect to the size of their ecological footprint. Cross-national differences in environmentalism may help to explain this variation. This paper provides one “micro-foundation” for explaining cross-country differences in environmental performance.

This paper also contributes to research on documenting consumer heterogeneity. Structural industrial organization research has used sophisticated econometric techniques to document that models that allow for consumer heterogeneity fit the observed data better than models that impose that preferences are identical among members of the same demographic group [23]. Such research does not explain why consumers with similar demographics make different choices. In this paper, I argue that ideological indicators, even if they are noisily measured, are useful for explaining differences in household behavior.

Section snippets

Why would environmentalists live a “green” lifestyle?

A self-interested environmentalist might reason that in day-to-day life that she is “small”. Her own consumption patterns only have a negligible effect on the environment.3 In this case, this environmentalist would vote pro-green but her consumption choices would be no different than the average person.

Alternatively, greens may

Identifying environmentalists

This paper's core empirical goal is to test whether environmentalists and non-environmentalists differ with respect to their day-to-day transportation and consumption patterns.6

Are people who live in Green Party communities environmentalists? Political evidence

This section presents two pieces of political evidence to establish that the communities that I am labeling as “environmentalists” are indeed “green” based on objective criteria. This is a key step for placating a skeptic's concern that a community's Green Party share is a clever but irrelevant variable for a researcher interested in measuring environmentalism's consequences.

Measuring consumption differences between greens and browns

To begin to study consumption differentials, I first examine where greens locate and where environmentalist stores cluster within California cities. Green communities are not randomly assigned within cities. Environmentalists are more likely to live closer to the CBD and locate close to rail transit stations. Such communities offer the infrastructure to live a non-resource intensive lifestyle where people can avoid vehicle use and instead use public transit and walking to commute, and shop. If

Conclusion

Standard consumption theory focuses on income and relative prices as key determinants of choice. Building on recent research studying the demand for green power (see [13]), this paper has examined how “environmentalism” influences the quantity and quality of household transportation decisions. Using a variety of data sources, I documented that Californian environmentalists make “greener” transportation choices than the average consumer. This finding does not simply reflect urban/suburban

Acknowledgments

I thank two constructive reviewers and participants at the 2006 University of Colorado Environmental Economics conference and seminar participants at Yale, Penn State and BU for useful comments. I thank Corey O’Hara for excellent GIS work.

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