Bard College Berlin News
Professor of Economics Dr. Ann-Kathrin Blankenberg publishes “Pro environmental behavior and life satisfaction: How strong is our evidence?” in Ecological Economics
The paper contributes to the agenda of behavioral and ecological economics by taking a more explicit approach to making causal inferences in the presence of merely cross-sectional data, something that is often ignored in traditional work in ecological economics or environmental psychology. Despite a popular belief in a “double dividend”—that pro‑environmental behavior benefits both the planet and human happiness—Binder, Blankenberg, and Nickel (2025) show that the scientific evidence for such a claim is much weaker than often stated. In a study with over 1,000 residents in a German town, there was no evidence for a link between pro-environmental behaviors (like recycling or biking) and higher satisfaction with life. If there was a link, it would be much smaller than the literature commonly assumes.
Inspired by insights from experimental approaches to economic behavior, the paper spells out what conditions need to be met for observational research to allow for causal inference even in the absence of strong causal designs. Using power analyses, equivalence testing, as well as Pearl’s approach to causal identification and the resulting directed acyclic graphs and explicit discussion of selection of control variables, the authors hope to help the field in improving the application of commonly used regression analysis and put the literature on pro-environmental behavior and well-being on a more solid footing.
For policy-making it is important to keep in mind that the evidence for a double dividend may not be as strong and uniform as we may want it to be. Since there's no strong evidence that pro-environmental behaviors per se directly boost happiness even so they may entail material sacrifice, climate policies shouldn’t rely on the idea that “going green” will benefit people —and without that personal payoff, public support for materially costly climate change policies may falter.
Access the paper here.
Post Date: 07-14-2025