Do risk, time, and social preferences predict sustainable behavior? Evidence from a qualitative synthesis and meta-analysis

Despite the urgency of addressing environmental challenges, from the overuse of natural resources to climate change, action is grossly lacking. Environmental challenges often unfold over long time horizons, involve risk and uncertainty, and pit self-interest against collective outcomes. This has led some scholars to explain inaction and the persistence of environmental challenges by appealing to social and psychological factors such as temporal discounting, risk aversion, and self-interest—preferences commonly assumed in microeconomic models of decision-making. If this is the case, it has implications for the design of interventions, policies, and institutions to promote sustainable actions. Yet, empirical evidence relating these preferences to sustainable behavior is mixed. We conduct a systematic literature review (75 papers; 426 effect sizes) and meta-analysis (39 papers; 299 effect sizes) of studies from 29 countries that elicit time, risk, and social preferences and correlate these with real-world environmentally-relevant behaviors. Overall, we find limited evidence that economic preferences assessed in the lab are strong predictors of sustainable behaviors—the relationship is only significant when preferences are elicited in the field setting (“lab-in-field”). In subgroup analyses, we find that prosocial preferences are a significant predictor of environmental behaviors, and the effect is stronger for studies where preferences are elicited using protocols that are framed in terms of real world impacts or conducted in the field. We also find that time, risk and social preferences predict monetary donations to environmental causes. These findings suggest a nuanced and modest relationship between economic preferences assessed in the lab and sustainable behaviors.