Research

Published Papers

A socio-economic examination of participation in socially innovative energy projects with J. Carroll et al. 2023. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2023.100746

This paper aims to examine the role of citizen investment in scaling up renewable generation through participating or investing in social innovation in energy. It presents an explorative study demonstrating results of large-scale surveys of the general public across twelve countries (11 European plus the USA), representing the views of over 10,000 individuals. These surveys focus on three types of innovative energy business models, namely: energy cooperatives, crowdfunding and peer-to-peer platforms. In particular, we study the socioeconomic, demographic and attitudinal attributes of self-reported early participants in similar energy organizations, and also separately among those who express an unwillingness to participate in the above business models. The findings suggest that factors such as age, education, gender, risk preferences, previous general investment experience and trust in the carbon saving claims of organizations are important in explaining both self-reported previous and future participation in energy initiatives.

Working Papers

Should I stay or should I go: Intentions to freelance across 16 countries with S. Innocenti 

(Accepted, Small Business Economics) 

A substantial literature explores entrepreneurial self-employment, while freelancing, a distinct and increasingly prevalent form of self-employment, is less well studied. Using an original large survey conducted in 16 countries, we investigate the key determinants of intentions to engage in these activities. We confirm the importance of socio-demographic characteristics and specific behavioural factors, but, as expected, some findings differ from the entrepreneurship transition literature. A detailed heterogeneity analysis high- lights that intentions to engage in freelancing varies across job and individual contingencies. Of concern, vulnerable cohorts have higher interest in this form of work with lower worker protections and higher risks.

Do Food Subsidies Change Diets for Good? Evidence from Subsidy Introduction and Withdrawal with P. Lohmann and A. Byfuglien (In Review)

Price subsidies are widely proposed to promote lower-carbon diets, yet real-world evidence on their effects remains scarce, and whether any effect persists once the subsidy is withdrawn is largely untested. Using two natural experiments in university cafeterias, we study the introduction and withdrawal of price subsidies on vegetarian meals, distinguishing temporary price responses from durable behavioural change in a high-frequency, repeated choice setting. One cafeteria introduced a 5% subsidy on vegetarian meals, while another removed a pre-existing 14% subsidy. Analysing over 110,000 meal choices, we find that introducing the subsidy raises vegetarian uptake by 3 percentage points, while removing one reduces it by a comparable amount. In both experiments, responses are concentrated among consumers with more vegetarian baseline diets. Event-study estimates show that behaviour adjusts immediately at each policy change, and the withdrawal experiment provides no evidence of persistence once the subsidy is removed. These findings are more consistent with heterogeneous price responsiveness than with habit formation. Back-of-the-envelope calculations imply an abatement cost of roughly £1,180 per tonne of CO2e, an order of magnitude above standard social cost of carbon estimates and well above comparable non-price interventions such as carbon labelling. Food subsidies thus lower the carbon content of diets while incentives are in place, but do not appear to produce lasting behavioural change.

Identity Activation and Choice Architecture as Complements: Experimental Evidence with P. Lohmann and M. Clark

Belief-based identity models predict that making salient the link between behaviour and self-image motivates identity-consistent action. We test whether this mechanism can resolve a fundamental tension in policy design: choice architecture interventions are effective but imposing them is contested, and voluntary uptake is low. In a pre-registered framed field experiment, we show that an identity cue raises willingness to pay for a restructured choice environment by £0.45, shifting a disproportionately large share of participants across the opt-in margin. The restructured environment reduces emissions by 26%. The identity cue shifts the decision to adopt the architecture but not the choices made within it, yet this composition channel produces meaningful aggregate gains in emissions reduction relative to deploying the choice architecture intervention alone.

Papers and Projects in Progress

Defaults and heterogeneous preferences: Framed Field Experiment with M. Clark
A new behavioural tax recycling mechanism: Framed Field Experiment with P. Lohmann  and M. Clark