IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/beh/jbepv1/v4y2020i1p43-48.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Testing the waters in Korea: Nudging toward the tap

Author

Listed:
  • David O Kasdan

    (Associate Professor of Public Administration, Graduate School of Governance, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Korea)

  • HaeNa Lee

    (Graduate School of Governance, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Korea)

  • Nagyeom Yang

    (Graduate School of Governance, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Korea)

Abstract

The negative internalities of personal cost and the externalities of environmental sustainability are important factors in the decision to purchase bottled water. Given the provision of safe and virtually costless tap water by the government, a preference for bottled water must be explained by an individual's taste and biases. This research examines the extent of those tastes and biases in the context of South Korea, where the tap water is globally recognized to be of high quality, yet the population continues to consume bottled water at a sustained rate of growth. A convenience sample of university students were subjects in an experiment and survey to understand the behavior. The results show that the taste preferences are negligible, yet biases persist. Nudge policy opportunities are discussed to discourage bottled water consumption.

Suggested Citation

  • David O Kasdan & HaeNa Lee & Nagyeom Yang, 2020. "Testing the waters in Korea: Nudging toward the tap," Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), vol. 4(1), pages 43-48, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:beh:jbepv1:v:4:y:2020:i:1:p:43-48
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://sabeconomics.org/journal/RePEc/beh/JBEPv1/articles/JBEP-4-1-4.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    nudge; bottled water; heuristics; consumerism; Korea;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General
    • Q25 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Water
    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:beh:jbepv1:v:4:y:2020:i:1:p:43-48. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SABE (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sabeeea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.