Publication: Behavioral Insights for the Green Transition: Capturing Household Beliefs, Preferences, and Attitudes in ECA
Loading...
Published
2025-06-28
ISSN
Date
2025-09-16
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
The Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region faces significant climate-related risks and promoting sustainable practices is crucial for long-term growth. Climate change is having a profound impact on the countries of the ECA region. ECA has some of the highest per capita carbon emissions in the world due to fossil-fuel-dependent, energy-intensive economies. The consequences of this dependency on the environment, coupled with rising energy prices in the region, signal a strong need for sustainable clean energy solutions (particularly in renewable energy) and transitions to less-energy-intensive technologies and practices. The World Bank’s ECA climate roadmap identifies transition risk as the biggest challenge facing the region, requiring critical action on areas related to energy, industry, transport, urban development, food, landscapes, and water. Addressing these areas will require a whole economic approach that considers the unique contributions of policy, financing, and people. This report provides valuable insights into the behavioral dimensions of climate change in the region, highlighting the need for tailored policies that address both individual and systemic barriers.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank. 2025. Behavioral Insights for the Green Transition: Capturing Household Beliefs, Preferences, and Attitudes in ECA. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/43734 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Behavioral Insights for Tax Compliance: A Whole-House Approach to Improving Taxpayer and Tax Official Beliefs, Attitudes, and Behaviors(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-08-25)The objective of this note is to summarize the role of behavioral science in tax compliance and tax administration, elaborating on a previous note outlining the World Bank’s past work in this area (Dalton et al., 2021). This note will provide an overview of a behaviorally informed approach to tax compliance and highlight how behavioral insights can be useful for diagnosing and confronting tax compliance challenges (section II), provide thoughts on a way forward for integrating behavioral insights into revenue administration, summarizing evidence from the field (section III), and present the approach and experience of the World Bank in this space (Annex). The note will place particular emphasis on the experimental and quasi-experimental literature on behaviorally-informed solutions to improve compliance and collection and group these into three generalized tools: the nudge (modifications to the decision environment), the budge (elevating new narratives around tax compliance), and the trudge (taking an inward-looking approach to improving compliance). We also developed a Practitioner’s Guide where we provide detailed “how-to” on applying behavioral insights for revenue collection.Publication Greening China’s Rural Energy : New Insights on the Potential of Smallholder Biogas(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-06)Clean, safe energy for rural areas is an important component of green growth and sustainable development. Biogas could be an important contributor, if its record in reality lives up to its expected potential. This paper provides a preliminary assessment of biogas use by smallholder farmers in rural China, using data collected from 2,700 households in five provinces. The authors find that user satisfaction is high, and environmental and economic benefits appear tangible. There are strong indications of reduced use of wood and crop residues for fuel. Less time is spent on collecting fuel wood and cooking, which is especially beneficial to women. Adopters also save on fertilizers, because of the use of biogas residues. Moreover, problems with suspension of biogas use, whether due to technical or human factors, remained limited. However, few tangible benefits to respiratory health were detected. Overall, these findings are grounds for optimism about the potential for of smallholder biogas to contribute to more sustainable development, in China and beyond.Publication Measuring Governance, Corruption, and State Capture : How Firms and Bureaucrats Shape the Business Environment in Transition Economies(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2000-04)As a symptom of fundamental institutional weaknesses, corruption needs to be viewed within a broader governance framework. It thrives where the state is unable to reign over its bureaucracy, to protect property and contractual rights, or to provide institutions that support the rule off law. Furthermore, governance failures at the national level cannot be isolated from the interface between the corporate and state sectors, in particular from the heretofore under-emphasized influence that firms may exert on the state. Under certain conditions, corporate strategies may exacerbate mis-governance at the national level. An in-depth empirical assessment of the links between corporate behavior and national governance can thus provide particular insights. The 1999 Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) - the transition economies component of the ongoing World Business Environment Survey - assesses in detail the various dimensions of governance from the perspective of about 3,000 firms in 20 countries. After introducing the survey framework and measurement approach, the authors present the survey results, focusing on governance, corruption, and state capture. By unbundling governance into its many dimensions, BEEPS permits an in-depth empirical assessment. The authors pay special attention to certain forms of grand corruption, notably state capture by parts of the corporate sector - that is, the propensity of firms to shape the underlying rules of the game by "purchasing" decrees, legislation, and influence at the central bank, which is found to be prevalent in a number of transition economies. The survey also measures other dimensions of grand corruption, including those associated with public procurement, and quantifies the more traditional ("prettier") forms of corruption. Cross-country surveys may suffer from bias if firms tend to systematically over- or underestimate the extent of problems within their country. The authors provide a new test of this potential bias, finding little evidence of country perception bias in BEEPS.Publication "Small Miracles" --Behavioral Insights to Improve Development Policy(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2015-02)One of the most fruitful advances in modern economics has been the introduction of psychological realism into the model of "economic man." The World Development Report 2015 organizes the evidence about how humans actually think and make decisions into a coherent framework useful for designing development policy. This paper elaborates on the three principles of human thinking that constitute the report's intellectual framework: Human thinking is dual process -- automatic as well as deliberative (thinking automatically); it is conditioned by social context and the salience of social identities (thinking socially); and it is shaped by mental models that are socially constructed (thinking with mental models). Behavioral insights create scope for policy interventions that produce "miracles" from the perspective of traditional economics.Publication Psychology and Behavioral Economics Lessons for the Design of a Green Growth Strategy(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-10)A green growth agenda requires policy makers, from local to supranational levels, to examine and influence behavior that impacts economic, social, and environmental outcomes on multiple scales. Behavioral and social change, in addition or conjunction with technological change, is thus a crucial component of any green growth strategy. A better understanding of how and why people consume, preserve, or exploit resources or otherwise make choices that collectively impact the environment has important and far-reaching consequences for the predictive accuracy of more sophisticated models, both of future states of the world and of the likely impact of different growth strategies and potential risk management strategies. The prevailing characterization of human decision making in policy circles is a rational economic one. Reliance on the assumptions of rational choice excludes from consideration a wide range of factors that affect how people make decisions and therefore need to be considered in predictions of human reactions to environmental conditions or proposed policy initiatives. In addition, a more complete and more fully descriptive understanding of decision processes provide powerful tools for policy design that complement legal or economic instruments or may lead to more effective implementation of such policy instruments.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Accelerating Investment: Challenges and Policies(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-09-19)Investment is the engine that expands productive capacity, modernizes infrastructure, creates jobs, and drives progress toward development and climate goals. Yet developing economies face an investment shortfall of historic proportions. Even as development needs rise, investment growth has slowed to about half its pace in the 2000s. Public investment alone cannot fill this gap. Private investment must play the leading role in reigniting growth, creating jobs, and supporting the transition to a more sustainable and resilient future. This book presents the World Bank’s most comprehensive assessment of investment in emerging and developing economies. It examines why investment matters, why it has stalled, and what it will take to revive it. The analysis highlights that countries that have successfully triggered investment booms combined sound macroeconomic frameworks with reforms that improved the business climate, strengthened governance, and mobilized private capital. History shows that when investment surges, economies grow faster, job creation accelerates, and poverty declines more rapidly. Reversing today’s slowdown is within reach — through credible fiscal and monetary policies, well-targeted public investment that attracts private capital, and stronger international cooperation to mobilize finance at scale. Reigniting investment is not just a national priority — it is a global imperative.Publication Sahel Irrigation Strategy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-09-05)The Sahel Irrigation Strategy aims to guide participating countries to scale up irrigation expansion and modernization rapidly and responsibly with a more diverse suite of interventions to optimize the use of their natural and financial resources. It provides a comprehensive roadmap to unlock the full potential of sustainable irrigation as a driver of agricultural productivity, food security, and resilience across the Sahel. Its primary objectives include taking stock of the progress achieved over the past decade, identifying emerging trends and challenges, and moving beyond problem identification to actionable solutions rooted in lessons learned. The strategy establishes updated and shared goals for irrigated agriculture tailored to short-term (2035), medium-term (2045), and long-term (2055) horizons. These targets are accompanied by a clear framework for intervention, designed to foster collective commitment and coordinated efforts among the six Sahelian countries.Publication Uganda Country Climate and Development Report(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-09-10)The Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) for Uganda examines the interplay between climate change and development. It presents how addressing climate change can support achieving the goals in Uganda’s Vision 2040 and Ten-Fold Growth Strategy, and help propel the country to upper-middle-income status. Uganda is the 14th most vulnerable nation to climate change, yet it is 163rd in readiness to address these risks, facing threats such as droughts and floods. The report highlights that, of the poorest households exposed to climate change, 80 percent already experience income loss from climate shocks. GDP could also drop by up to 3.1 percent by 2050 without additional climate action. Climate change poses numerous challenges, including increased variability in crop yields, potential internal climate migration of 12 million people by 2050, notable drop in labor productivity due to heat stress, increased health risks from waterborne diseases and malaria, and exposure of the country’s physical infrastructure to extreme climate events. To combat these challenges, the report recommends transitioning to a low-carbon, climate-resilient growth path by implementing four multisectoral intervention packages. These include boosting resilience through jobs for youth and services for the poor; promoting resilient and productive agriculture and natural resources with lower GHG emissions; developing climate-responsive energy, transport, and digital infrastructure; and fostering planned and climate-positive urbanization. Additionally, the report calls for whole-of-economy measures that strengthen governance of climate action, enhance preparedness for climate hazards including through improved early warning systems, operationalization of the national climate finance strategy, and incentivizing private sector participation. By implementing these intervention packages and whole-of-economy measures, Uganda can lower its risk to climate change and achieve sustainable economic growth.Publication Energy Prices, Energy Intensity, and Firm Performance(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-02-20)This paper estimates the effect of electricity prices on firm performance, focusing on firm productivity, sales, and employment. Using the World Bank Business Pulse Survey data for a sample of 24 emerging markets and developing economies during 2019–23, the paper estimates the average effect and the heterogeneous effects across industries of varying energy intensity and firms that implemented (or did not implement) energy efficiency measures (self-reported in the Business Pulse Survey). The findings show that increasing electricity prices by 1 percent reduces employment at firms in energy-intensive industries that did not adopt energy efficiency measures by about 1.5 percent, compared with similar firms in energy-non-intensive sectors. In parallel, energy-intensive firms may increase sales and productivity but this result is robust to all alternative specifications. Firms may increase sales while reducing employment after energy price hikes, by adopting energy-efficient technologies and by passing through costs to consumers in inelastic markets while reducing employment in energy-intensive sectors due to cost pressures. These results highlight the adoption of energy efficiency measures by firms as an important employment protection policy action to cope with future volatility in energy (electricity) prices.Publication Togo Economic Update, August 2025: Boosting Growth and Restoring Fiscal Space in Uncertain Times(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-08-28)Togo’s economic trajectory in recent years has been shaped by both resilient performance and emerging vulnerabilities. The 2025 Economic Update underscores the urgency of restoring fiscal space and implementing strategic structural reforms to sustain private sector-led growth and job creation. Through an integrated analysis in two chapters, the report presents a nuanced narrative of the country’s macroeconomic outlook and delineates actionable policy paths to foster inclusive, sustainable development.