Encouraging pro-environmental behaviors: power of testimonials

Abstract

Testimonials, such as videos or quotes from influencers who speak positively about a product or a practice, are a widespread, cost-effective, and tested marketing strategy for consumer goods. Given the appeal of testimonials in promoting pro-environmental behaviors, very little is known about whether testimonials can spur pro-environmental behaviors. To that end, an incentive compatible framed-field experiment was designed to test the impact of an expert testimonial on the willingness to pay for native plants as a pro-environmental technology. An ex-ante statistical power analysis was conducted to determine the required sample size. Our results indicate that the audio-visual testimonial did not have a statistically significant impact on the participants’ willingness to pay for the pro-environmental technology. Several demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the participants had a statistically significant impact on the willingness to pay for the pro-environmental technology. These findings are policy relevant as they suggest that testimonials are not a panacea, and they help identify a target population for environmental outreach programs.