Jan Schmitz’s research while affiliated with Radboud University and other places

... Lucerne and Zug are small to mediumsized cities, where SMEs play an important role in the local economy. 3 The consulting consists of a standardized procedure covering four areas (mobility, materials, information and quality, energy and buildings) and is designed to provide a short check-up of an SME's potential to improve its environmental management, and thus to decrease its resource use and increase its environmental sustainability (see also Grieder et al., 2023). This standardized consulting takes around one hour of time during which a consultant is on-site at the consulted SME. ...

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Not Only for the Money: Nudging SMEs to Promote Environmental Sustainability

... implementing environmentally-friendly business practices are often outweighed by the cost. In line with this view, Grieder et al. (2022) find that SMEs' participation in an environmental consulting program is not driven by the potential financial benefits of implementing environmentally-friendly business practices. Instead, especially for smaller firms in the SME spectrum, the motivations and values of managers or owners seem to be crucial companyinternal drivers of the implementation of environmentally-friendly business practices (see also Schrader, 2015, Wickert et al., 2016). ...

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How Sludge Impairs the Effectiveness of Policy Programs: A Field Experiment with SMEs

... Simplification of processes to apply for and access programs can help. Grieder et al. (2022) find that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are more likely to adopt energy-efficiency measures when the benefits of doing so are simplified. As above, simplification could be an individual-level approach such as clearer recycling instructions. ...

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Sticky brown sludge everywhere: can sludge explain barriers to green behaviour?

... The second donation is smaller and this decrease is even stronger if both decisions happen within a day instead of having an extended period of one week between the two decisions. Grieder et al. (2021) also document donation behavior in line with moral licensing in two subsequent decisions. However, from an aggregate perspective, additional asks still increase total donations. ...

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Image concerns and the dynamics of prosocial behavior

... Yet, the MLPGG's group structure proves to be well-suited for examining the behavioral consequences not only of vertical but also horizontal inequality. To the best of our knowledge, only Lange, Schmitz, and Schwirplies (2022) addressed horizontal inequality by studying how differences in the initial endowment affect participants' contributions in a MLPGG. Their results suggest that inequality arising from the arbitrary allocation of different initial endowments (i) reduces contributions to the global good from individuals with a high endowment and (ii) enhances cooperation among individuals with a low endowment for their local good. ...

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Real-effort in the Multilevel Public Goods Game

... There is a conventional wisdom that people are rational decision-makers, and their choices reflect their underlying values and preferences (Ellsberg 1961); however, there is evidence to suggest that individuals may 'reverse' their preferences depending on alternative descriptions of a problem (Tversky and Kahneman 1981;Shafir 1993;Ledgerwood and Boydstun 2014). This is usually called framing effect, which is at the centre of the debate challenging the significance of rationality principles in decisionmaking (Druckman 2001;Grieder, Kistler, and Schmitz 2020;LeBoeuf and Shafir 2003;Levin, Schneider, and Gaeth 1998). Previous research has used prospect theory to explain how different frames (i.e. ...

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Making choices in addressing sustainability problems: A link to framing effects and protected values

... Another study found a combination of consistent descriptive and injunctive information on individuals' energy usage to be effective in changing energy usage (Bonan et al., 2020). These messaging tactics are found to be useful for individuals whose energy usage is furthest from the norm, as they are motivated to change to adhere to the consumption standard of their communities (Bonan et al., 2020;Brülisauer et al., 2020). ...

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Adolescents as energy conservation stewards

... This was supported by a study from the United Nations Economic and Social Communication for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) that examined the rationale for the implementation of the environmental tax in the Asia-Pacific region in achieving Sustainability Development Goals (SDG) (UN, 2017). Many countries, for example the United States of America (UN, 2017), Switzerland (Grieder et al., 2021) and Ireland (Bruin & Yakut, 2018), have successfully changed human behaviour, reduced climate change issues and increased government revenue through an environmental tax policy, particularly from carbon tax. ...

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Environmental Issues in Malaysia: Suggestion to Impose Carbon Tax

... Framing interventions may utilize social comparison, goal setting, or commitment and are often evaluated in conjunction with the impact of social norms and norm-based strategies on long-term behavior. Hence, this type of interventions also depends on the individuals' perception on and adherence to norms (Xu et al., 2015;Ghesla et al., 2020;Kacperski et al., 2023;Mäkivierikko et al., 2023;Syropoulos et al., 2023). ...

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From concept to impact: strategic guidelines for environmental behavior change interventions

... Switching individuals' default settings refers to making the "green option" the default choice instead of conventional options, thus creating an anchoring effect. In turn, this is reinforced by consumers' tendency to rely on heuristics, forcing them to consider whether to opt out of the green option rather than join it (Ghesla et al., 2019). In addition, as the default option is reconstructed, framing new information from a loss perspective can further stimulate consumers' loss aversion psychology and promote the target behaviors advocated by low-carbon policies (Kahneman et al., 1991). ...

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Examining the Effects of Status Quo Bias on Household/Individual Carbon Consumption