Economic Anxiety and Willingness to Pay for Climate Mitigation: A Randomised Information Experiment

Last registered on April 23, 2026
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Economic Anxiety and Willingness to Pay for Climate Mitigation: A Randomised Information Experiment
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0018346
Initial registration date
April 14, 2026

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
April 23, 2026, 9:21 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name
Panagiota Tzamourani
Affiliation
Deutsche Bundesbank
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2026-04-15
End date
2027-12-31
Keywords
Behavior, Environment & Energy, Finance & Microfinance
Additional Keywords
Economic anxiety, income expectations, precautionary saving, willingness-to-pay, climate change mitigation, information experiment, household survey, artificial intelligence, labour market, inflation
JEL code(s)
C93, D84, D91, Q54
Secondary IDs
D12, D15, J24, Q58, E21, G51
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
This study examines the relationship between household economic expectations and willingness to support climate action, using a randomised information experiment embedded in the Bundesbank Online Panel of Households (BOP-HH), a large representative panel of German households, to be fielded in the April 2026 wave. Approximately 4,000 respondents are randomly assigned to treatment arms that provide information about current economic developments, varying the nature and framing of the economic information provided. Following the treatment, respondents report their income expectations, saving intentions, and willingness to pay for climate mitigation. The experiment tests whether exposure to economic information affects household willingness to support climate action and examines the role of saving intentions and income expectations as potential mediating channels. A secondary randomisation of the willingness-to-pay question allows a methodological comparison of alternative elicitation formats.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Tzamourani, Panagiota. 2026. "Economic Anxiety and Willingness to Pay for Climate Mitigation: A Randomised Information Experiment." AEA RCT Registry. April 23. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.18346-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Respondents are randomly assigned to one of five information treatment arms. Each treatment arm provides a short statement about a current economic issue, varying the nature and framing of the economic information provided. A neutral control group receives no economic information. The active treatment arms vary along two dimensions: the type of economic issue described (labour market developments related to technological change, or energy price developments related to geopolitical events) and the framing of the information (positive, negative, or with an additional climate lens). Following the treatment, respondents answer a battery of questions about their economic expectations, saving intentions, and willingness to pay for climate mitigation. The willingness-to-pay question is itself randomised between two elicitation formats.
Intervention Start Date
2026-04-15
Intervention End Date
2026-05-05

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Willingness to pay for climate mitigation (monthly euro amount, open-ended elicitation).
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Planned savings change (qualitative), Planned monthly saving (quantitative), Expected personal income change, Concern about job loss, expected purchasing power
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
This is a randomised information experiment embedded in a large representative household panel survey. Respondents are randomly assigned to one of five treatment arms with equal probability. The randomisation is implemented within the survey platform at the individual level, ensuring balance across observable characteristics. The experiment follows a between-subjects design — each respondent receives only one treatment. A secondary randomisation of the primary outcome question is crossed with the treatment arm assignment, yielding ten randomisation cells of equal size. The study is pre-registered prior to data collection.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomization done in office by a computer
Randomization Unit
Individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
4,000 individuals (no clustering; randomisation at the individual level)
Sample size: planned number of observations
About 4000 individuals
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
The sample is divided equally across ten randomisation groups (5 treatment arms × 2 WTP question versions), yielding approximately 400 respondents per group.
Aggregating across WTP versions, the effective sample per treatment arm is approximately 800 respondents:
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
The primary outcome is willingness to pay (WTP) for climate mitigation, elicited as a monthly euro amount. With approximately 4,000 respondents divided equally across 10 randomisation cells (5 treatment arms × 2 WTP question versions), each treatment arm contains approximately 800 respondents when pooling across WTP versions. We assume a standard deviation approximately equal to the mean monthly WTP, consistent with the right-skewed distribution with a large mass at zero typical of stated WTP variables. Under this assumption, at 5% significance (two-sided) and 80% power, the minimum detectable effect for the main treatment vs. control comparison pooling across WTP versions (n ≈ 800 per arm) is approximately 14% of the control group mean, and for analyses within each WTP version (n ≈ 400 per arm) approximately 20% of the control group mean. Assuming a control group mean of €8–15 per month, this corresponds to an MDE of approximately €1.40–2.80 per month for the pooled comparison and €2.00–3.96 per month for the within-version comparison.
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number
Analysis Plan