Incorporating environmental awareness into consumer purchase decisions can play an impor- tant role in moving the economy towards sustainability. Consumers’ incentives in this area remain understudied. We integrate the doubly randomized preference trial (DRPT) and the randomized conjoint experiment to identify the heterogeneous impacts of providing carbon footprint informa- tion on consumers’ choice among hypothetical long-haul international airline itineraries. DRPT allows us to identify heterogeneous effects even where the consumer types are not observable. We use primary data obtained via an online survey conducted in Japan (N=32,610). The results indicate that targeted provision of information significantly influences consumers’ purchasing de- cisions. We define the consumers who choose to observe carbon footprint information rather than mileage accrual rate information in making ticket purchasing decisions have higher environmental awareness, and find that the provision of carbon footprint information increases the purchasing probability of consumers with higher environmental awareness by 12.3%. When the level of carbon emissions increases by 50%, respondents with higher levels of environmental concerns are 17% less likely to purchase a ticked than those for whom environmental concerns were not a priority. Our results have implications for design and effectiveness of environmental awareness campaigns in transport sector.
Double-Edged Impacts of Carbon Footprint Information on Air Travel Demand