KCG Journal Articles

The Backfire Effect of Sustainable Social Cues. New Evidence on Social Moral Licensing

8th March 2022
KCG Secretary
Authors: WassiliLasarov, RobertMai, StefanHoffmann (Ecological Economics, 2022, 195 : 107376)

To encourage individuals to consume sustainably, managers and policymakers often highlight positive examples that others have set regarding sustainable consumer behavior (e.g., donations to a good cause). This study shows that under certain circumstances, this strategy provokes a paradoxical effect such that consumers deliberately deviate from these positive examples[...]

Vanishing Boycott Impetus: Why and How Consumer Participation in a Boycott Decreases Over Time

8th March 2022
KCG Secretary
Authors: Wassili Lasarov, Stefan Hoffmann, Ulrich Orth (Journal of Business Ethics, forthcoming)

Media reports that a company behaves in a socially nonresponsible manner frequently result in consumer participation in a boycott. As time goes by, however, the number of consumers participating in the boycott starts dwindling. Yet, little is known on why individual participation in a boycott declines and what type of consumer is more likely to stop boycotting earlier rather than later. Integrating research on drivers of individual boycott participation with multi-stage models and the hot/cool cognition system, suggests a “heat-up” phase in which boycott participation is fueled by expressive drivers, and a “cool-down” phase in which instrumental drivers become more influential[...]

When Drivers Become Inhibitors of Organic Consumption: The Need for a Multistage View

7th March 2022
KCG Secretary
Authors: Robert Mai, Stefan Hoffmann, Ingo Balderjahn (Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 2021, 49: 1151–1174)

The organic market is characterized by remarkable disparities, and confusion persists about which motives drive organic consumption. To understand them, this research introduces the idea that the same consumer motives can exert different and potentially opposite impacts when organic consumption patterns unfold[...]

Stepping up to the Mark? Firms’ Export Activity and Environmental Innovation in 14 European Countries

7th March 2022
KCG Secretary
Authors: Aoife Hanley, Finn Ole Semrau (Industry and Innovation, forthcoming)

We investigate the ability of exports to trigger the adoption of environmental innovation (EI) in firms, shedding light on the determinants of convergence in environmental standards for Europe’s catch-up economies. To analyse this question empirically, we measure the latter as the 1) probability a firm adopts EI and the 2) breadth of EI adoption in firms[...]

Low-carbon Power Technologies and the Stability of International Climate Cooperation

7th March 2022
KCG Secretary
Authors: Vicki Duscha, Jan Kersting, Sonja Peterson, Joachim Schleich, Matthias Weitzel (Climate Change Economics, 2021,12(4): 2150013)

This paper explores the effects of the technological development of key low-carbon power technologies (photovoltaic (PV), wind, and carbon capture and storage (CCS)) on the stability of global climate cooperation under several assumptions about climate-related damage[...]

Climate policies after Paris: Pledge, Trade and Recycle: Insights from the 36th Energy Modeling Forum Study (EMF36)

7th March 2022
KCG Secretary
Authors: Christoph Böhringer, Sonja Peterson, Thomas F. Rutherford, Jan Schneider, Malte Winkler (Energy Economics, 2021, 103: 105471)

This article summarizes insights from the 36th Energy Modeling Forum study (EMF36) on the magnitude and distribution of economic adjustment costs of greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. Under the Paris Agreement, countries have committed to emission reduction targets – so-called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) – in order to combat global warming[...]

The Blue Carbon Wealth of Nations

7th March 2022
KCG Secretary
Authors: Christine Bertram, Martin Quaas, Thorsten B. H. Reusch, Athanasios T. Vafeidis, Claudia Wolff, Wilfried Rickels (Nature Climate Change, 2021, 11: 704–709)

Carbon sequestration and storage in mangroves, salt marshes and seagrass meadows is an essential coastal ‘blue carbon’ ecosystem service for climate change mitigation. Here we offer a comprehensive, global and spatially explicit economic assessment of carbon sequestration and storage in three coastal ecosystem types at the global and national levels[...]

Social Science Research to Inform Solar Geoengineering

7th March 2022
KCG Secretary
Authors: Joseph E. Aldy, Tyler Felgenhauer, William A. Pizer, Massimo Tavoni, Mariia Belaia, Mark E. Borsuk, Arunabha Ghosh, Garth Heutel, Daniel Heyen, Joshua Horton, David Keith, Christine Merk, Juan Moreno-Cruz, Jesse L. Reynolds, Katharine Ricke, Wilfried Rickels, Soheil Shayegh, Wake Smith, Simone Tilmes, Gernot Wagner, Jonathan B. Wiener (Science, 2021, 374(6569): 815–818)

As the prospect of average global warming exceeding 1.5°C becomes increasingly likely, interest in supplementing mitigation and adaptation with solar geoengineering (SG) responses will almost certainly rise. For example stratospheric aerosol injection to cool the planet could offset some of the warming for a given accumulation of atmospheric greenhouse gases (1)[...]

Does the Belt and Road Initiative stimulate Chinese Exports? Evidence from Micro Data

25th February 2022
KCG Secretary
Authors: Holger Görg, Haiou Mao (The World Economy, forthcoming)

This paper evaluates firms’ exporting responses to BRI and considers their heterogeneity in ownership types, product types, regional origin and trade mode. This is done by analyzing firm-product-destination level customs data from 2008 to 2016. Our empirical results show that aggregate export behavior increased significantly after BRI[...]

China’s Investments in Germany and the Role of COVID-19 Pandemic

19th November 2021
KCG Secretary
Authors: Xinming Xia, Wan-Hsin Liu (Intereconomics, 2021, 56(2): 113–119)

This paper analyses how China’s investments in Germany have developed over time and the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in this regard, based on four different datasets, including our own survey in mid-2020. Our analysis shows that Germany is currently one of the most attractive investment destinations for Chinese investors.