Group 05
Personal Budgeting of Carbon Emissions and Its Impact
Dear Group 5,
Thank you for your work on personal carbon budgets and behavior. You’ve correctly focused on mental accounting, salience, and externalities. The potential for success is high if you clarify your main outcome of interest and link your conceptual story to a few concrete examples and numbers.
For the presentation and the final proposal, your main task is to develop a clear conceptual and policy framework, supported by selective numbers or visuals from existing sources.
Next Steps
Clarify your main outcome of interest.
Decide whether you are primarily focusing on:- changes in specific behaviors (e.g., transport, energy use, diet), or
- overall carbon literacy, awareness, and perceived responsibility.
- changes in specific behaviors (e.g., transport, energy use, diet), or
Engage with key literature on personal carbon budgets.
In your proposal and presentation, I recommend citing:- “Personal carbon allowances revisited” (Nature Sustainability, 2021)
- “Personal Carbon Budgets: A PESTLE Review” (Sustainability, 2022)
- “Encouraging people to set lower personal carbon budgets: anchoring is more effective than social reference groups” (Frontiers in Psychology, 2025)
- US EPA’s “Carbon Footprint Calculator” as an example of a practical tool
Use these to motivate why personal carbon budgeting might work, what challenges arise, and how it fits within broader climate policy.
- “Personal carbon allowances revisited” (Nature Sustainability, 2021)
Use real-world tools and examples.
Identify one or two real-world personal carbon budgeting tools or calculators (e.g., the EPA calculator) and briefly summarize:- what they measure, and
- how they present information and feedback to users.
- what they measure, and
Develop a simple behavioral framework.
Build a mental accounting–based story of how a personal carbon “budget” could:- change marginal decisions for high-impact vs. low-impact activities, and
- complement (or conflict with) price-based incentives like energy or fuel taxes.
- change marginal decisions for high-impact vs. low-impact activities, and
Incorporate simple numbers or visuals (no original data analysis needed).
- Draw on secondary data or parameter values from your references (e.g., typical household emissions by category).
- Add at least one visualization and/or descriptive/statistical result (e.g., a pie chart of household emissions sources, or a table comparing typical budgets vs. current average emissions) to your presentation slides to motivate your research.
- Draw on secondary data or parameter values from your references (e.g., typical household emissions by category).
Discuss policy implications.
Add a short section explaining how personal budgeting tools might:- complement existing climate strategies (carbon taxes, regulations, subsidies), and
- raise issues of fairness, feasibility, and political acceptability.
- complement existing climate strategies (carbon taxes, regulations, subsidies), and
Questions to Think About as You Refine Your Proposal
You do not need to answer all of these directly in the proposal, but they can help you sharpen your narrative, economic reasoning, and policy recommendations.
1️⃣ Behavioral Mechanisms
- Do you think personal carbon budgets would change behavior more effectively than price signals alone (e.g., energy or fuel taxes)? Why or why not?
- How does mental accounting differ from standard price-based incentives in the way it shapes decisions and attention?
- Would framing (e.g., annual vs. monthly carbon budgets) or anchoring (e.g., suggested “low” target) matter for how people respond?
2️⃣ Equity & Fairness
- Would a uniform per-capita carbon budget be fair, given differences in income, climate, infrastructure (car dependence, public transit availability), and historical responsibility?
- How might you think about fairness if two households have similar budgets but very different constraints (e.g., rural vs. urban, renters vs. homeowners)?
- Should personal carbon budgets be adjusted for ability to pay or basic needs, or would that undermine the idea of equal responsibility?
3️⃣ Systems & Policy Connection
- Under what conditions could personal carbon budgeting actually influence policy or markets, rather than just making individuals feel guilty or virtuous?
- What kinds of aggregate data or feedback loops (e.g., public reporting, neighborhood or national averages, voluntary commitments) would be needed for personal budgets to matter at a system level?
- Could governments or firms realistically integrate personal carbon budgets into existing policies (e.g., loyalty programs, utility bills, transport passes)?
4️⃣ Design of Personal Carbon Budgeting Schemes
- Should personal budgets focus on all emissions or just a subset (e.g., travel, energy use), and why?
- What kinds of information displays (traffic-light labels, progress bars, comparisons to peers) are most likely to support sustained behavior change?
Best,
Byeong-Hak