An estimated 21% of carbon emissions in the United States are attributable to companies, and yet to date there is scant research on how to make firm operations more efficient in terms of reducing pollution. However, the numbers suggest that getting employees to change their behavior could significantly impact climate change. So we partnered with Virgin Atlantic Airways on a field experiment to understand how the behavior of employees—in this case, airline captains—influences fuel efficiency, and how low-cost company interventions can influence their behavior.
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Virgin Atlantic Tested 3 Ways to Change Employee Behavior
Results from a field experiment.
August 01, 2016
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RM Robert Metcalfe is a research scholar in Economics, Becker Friedman Institute, Department of Economics, University of Chicago, where he undertakes research in microeconomic research. Prior to joining the University of Chicago, he was a Research Fellow in Economics at the University of Oxford and previously worked in the U.K. Government as an Economist. He also served as a Fellow at the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team at the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Office of the U.S. President. Dr. Metcalfe’s research interests revolve around the development and testing of price theory and behavioral theory using naturally occurring data and field experiments primarily with Fortune 500 companies, charitable organizations, and national governments. -
GG Greer Gosnell is a Ph.D. researcher of environmental economics in the Grantham Research Institute at LSE. Her research combines experimental and behavioral economics to reveal cost-effective climate change mitigation strategies at the microeconomic level. Her current projects focus on the contexts of commercial fuel efficiency, residential energy and resource use, and climate change negotiations. -
John A. List is the Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago and Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Australian National University, as well as the chief economist at Lyft and, previously, at Uber. He has served on the Council of Economic Advisers and is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the AAEA’s Galbraith Award. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Economist, Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Slate, and The Washington Post, and on NPR, NBC, and Bloomberg. List has authored over 250 peer-reviewed journal articles, several academic books, including national bestseller The Voltage Effect.
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