1:00-2:00pm: Social Influences on Environmental Behavior

Can value predict behavior? Cultural variations in the association between pro-environmental value and behavior

Kimin Eom, Heejung Kim, David Sherman (Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, UCSB), Keiko Ishii (Department of Psychology, Kobe University, Japan)

The current research examines cultural variations in the extent to which pro-environmental attitudes, values, and beliefs are associated with pro-environmental behaviors. The results show that there are significant cultural differences in the association between pro-environmental value and behavior.

Social Choice in the Wild: Deliberative decision making and group decision stability

Peter Towbin, (Economics Department, University of California, Santa Cruz)

A field experiment in deliberative decision making focused on the contested local issue of whether to build a costly desalination plant to supplement Santa Cruz water supplies tests whether the substantive dialogue proposed by deliberative democracy theorists induces structure on the collective set of preferences that is crucial to decision making. This paper discusses the context and methodology of the study, results of data analysis, and broader implications for reinventing democracy in a complex and partisan world.

Exploring Policy Applications of Social Influence in Transportation Demand Management

Susan Pike (UC Davis Center for Environmental Policy and Behavior)

This paper investigates the role of social influence in transportation decision making. Potential policy avenues which employ social influence as a tool to influence travel behavior and reduce congestion and related problems are explored.

2:00-2:20: Break with snacks and coffee

2:20-3:20: Voluntary Environmentalism

The complexity of voluntary sustainability standards: An emerging economies perspective

Ivan Montiel (Loyola Marymount School of Business), Trevor Zink (Bren), Petra Christman (Rutgers University)

Firms in emerging economies are frequently pressured by their customers from developed countries to adopt voluntary sustainability standards. Using survey data and interview data from export-oriented agricultural firms in Mexico, we find that increased uncertainty in post-adoption changes in customer behavior and in future evolution of standards significantly reduces the number of food safety standards that firms adopt. We discuss recommendations for standards-setting organizations and emerging economy firms.

Eco-Premium or Eco-Penalty? Eco-labels and quality in the organic wine market

Magali Delmas (UCLA Institute of the Environment & UCLA Anderson School of Management) and Neil Lessem (UCLA Department of Economics)

By focusing on the information asymmetry between producers and consumers over the environmental attributes of a product or service, rather than how the label meets consumer needs, eco-labels may send irrelevant, confusing or even detrimental messages to consumers. Our analysis of consumer responses to two similar eco-labels for wine emphasizes the need to create eco-labels that communicate clearly both the environmental attributes and the private benefits associated with them.

Who joins the club? Learning pathways for sustainable agriculture certification

Michael Levy (Graduate Group in Ecology, University of California, Davis)

How do farmers' learning preferences affect their likelihood of joining sustainable agriculture "clubs" in the absence of price premiums? We model the likelihood of various sustainability certifications as functions of farmer learning pathways.

Short Break 3:20-3:30

3:30-4:30: Environmental Policy

Experiments in Environmental Accountability in Chile

Javiera Barandiaran (Department of Global Studies, UCSB)

I compare three industrial projects in Chile as experiments in accountability. Though subject to the same regulations, accountability was exercised differently in each: through a trial, a closed-door negotiation, and an audit to repeat assessment. Discretion is important in such trial and error democracy.

Bidding up and Bandwagoning: Policy-Making during Energy Crises

Hanna Breetz (Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley)

Energy crises in the 1970s and 2000s led to 'crash programs' for alternative fuels. This paper describes the policy-making process in which policies emerge from a competition between the White House and Congress rather than interest group policy entrepreneurship.

Titling Community Land to Prevent Deforestation: No Evidence of Effectiveness in Morona-Santiago, Ecuador

Mark T. Buntaine (Bren School, UC Santa Barbara), Stuart E. Hamilton (College of William & Mary), Marco Millones Mayer (College of William & Mary)

Land titling programs for forests are thought to reduce deforestation by lengthening the time horizon of landholders and improving the ability of landholders to access the exclusion and enforcement capacities of the state. We find that a USAID-funded land titling program in Ecuador had no effect on forest loss in subsequent years, which casts doubt on land titling as a forest conservation tool.

Reception to follow in the Bren Courtyard 4:30-5:30