The Value of Green Work among prospective workers

Last registered on September 28, 2026

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

The Value of Green Work among prospective workers

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0019818

Initial registration date

September 25, 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

September 28, 2026, 9:53 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

Etienne Dagorn

Affiliation

LEM-U Lille

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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Zoé Le Squeren

PI Affiliation

LUMEN - U Lille

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Claire Lanvin

PI Affiliation

LEM - U Lille

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Additional Trial Information

Status

On going

Start date

2026-09-01

End date

2026-09-30

Keywords

Labor

Additional Keywords

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

This study examines how prospective workers value environmental characteristics in job offers and the extent to which they are willing to trade salary for such characteristics. The experiment is embedded in the CRAFT project, which studies environmental knowledge, values, representations, and forms of environmental engagement among university students.

Participants are students enrolled in business and management, engineering, economics, and architecture programmes at the University of Lille and the Lille National School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. They complete a discrete choice experiment in which they choose between pairs of fictitious but realistic job offers. Respondents are randomly assigned to one of three experimental blocks, each containing six binary choice tasks.

Job offers vary experimentally along six dimensions: environmental mission content, ISO 14001 environmental certification, green employer discourse, public versus private organisation, telework availability, and monthly gross salary. The occupational framing and reference salary are adapted to respondents’ field of study, while the experimental attributes retain the same conceptual meaning across occupational versions.

The primary outcomes are respondents’ choices between job offers. The main estimands are the effects of environmental mission content, environmental certification, and green employer discourse on job choice. Because salary is experimentally varied, the study also estimates the monthly salary-equivalent value of each environmental job attribute. Secondary analyses examine differences in preferences according to environmental worldviews, value orientations, socio-demographic characteristics, and programme of study.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Dagorn, Etienne, Claire Lanvin and Zoé Le Squeren. 2026. "The Value of Green Work among prospective workers." AEA RCT Registry. September 28. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.19818-1.0

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Participants complete a discrete choice experiment designed to measure preferences for environmental and other characteristics of prospective jobs. In six successive tasks, respondents choose between two fictitious but realistic job offers.

The offers vary experimentally along six dimensions: environmental mission content, ISO 14001 environmental certification, green employer discourse, public versus private recruiting organisation, telework availability, and monthly gross salary. The occupational title and salary scale are adapted to respondents' programme of study to make the choices relevant to plausible post-graduation employment.

Respondents are randomly assigned to one of three prespecified blocks of six choice tasks. The choices generated by the experiment are used to estimate the value respondents place on the different job characteristics and their willingness to trade salary for environmental job attributes.

Intervention Start Date

2026-09-01

Intervention End Date

2026-09-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

The primary outcome is the respondent's choice between the two job offers presented in each completed discrete-choice task.

The primary preference estimands are the effects on job choice of three experimentally varied environmental job attributes: environmental mission content; ISO 14001 environmental certification; and green employer discourse.

The study also estimates salary-equivalent valuations for each of these three environmental attributes, representing the amount of monthly gross salary respondents would be willing to forgo to obtain the corresponding job characteristic.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

For every completed choice task, each of the two alternatives is represented by a binary choice indicator equal to one for the selected offer and zero for the alternative not selected. Unanswered choice tasks are treated as missing.

The effects of environmental mission content, environmental certification, and green employer discourse are estimated jointly with telework availability, public-sector status, and displayed monthly gross salary using a conditional logit model in which the respondent-task constitutes the choice set.

The primary monetary outcomes are salary-equivalent valuations calculated from the ratio of each environmental-attribute coefficient to the salary coefficient. Salary is expressed in hundreds of euros, so the monthly gross salary-equivalent valuation for environmental attribute k is:

WTP_k = 100 × beta_k / beta_salary.

These valuations will be interpreted as willingness to forgo monthly gross salary when the estimated salary coefficient is positive. Average changes in predicted choice probabilities will also be reported for the three environmental attributes.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

pairwise differences in the valuation of the three environmental attributes; the effect of the total number of environmental characteristics attached to an offer; preferences for telework availability and public versus private recruiting organisations; average changes in predicted choice probabilities associated with experimentally varied job attributes; and heterogeneity in preferences according to respondent characteristics, including environmental worldviews, value orientations, declared pro-environmental behaviours, environmental-policy support, gender, scholarship status, parental occupational categories, urban residence, French-language proficiency, programme of enrolment, and study level.

Post-experiment measures of application intentions, perceived realism of the job offers, recognition of the study purpose, and stated rankings of job characteristics will be analysed descriptively and exploratorily.

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

A secondary environmental-attribute index is constructed as the sum of environmental mission content, ISO 14001 certification, and green employer discourse. It ranges from zero to three and measures the number of environmental characteristics associated with an offer.

Pairwise contrasts compare the coefficients on environmental mission content, environmental certification, and green employer discourse without imposing a prespecified ordering.

Heterogeneity analyses interact experimentally varied job attributes with respondent-level characteristics. These analyses are secondary and exploratory and are not interpreted as causal effects of the respondent characteristics.

Post-DCE assessments are collected after the experimental choices and therefore do not determine inclusion in the primary analytical sample and are not used as confirmatory moderators.

Experimental Design

The study uses a discrete choice experiment embedded at the beginning of a questionnaire administered to university students. Each respondent completes six binary choice tasks involving pairs of fictitious but realistic job offers.

The offers vary in environmental mission content, ISO 14001 environmental certification, green employer discourse, public versus private organisation, telework availability, and monthly gross salary. Respondents are randomly assigned to one of three blocks, each containing six prespecified choice tasks.

The experiment includes 18 choice sets in total. Occupational framing is adapted to respondents' programme of study using plausible entry-level occupations, while the experimental job attributes retain the same conceptual meaning across programmes.

The primary analysis estimates the relationship between experimentally varied job characteristics and offer choice using conditional logit models, with standard errors clustered at the respondent level. Because salary varies across offers, the design also permits estimation of salary-equivalent valuations for non-wage job characteristics.

Experimental Design Details

Not available

Randomization Method

Respondents are randomly assigned by computer within the survey to one of three prespecified discrete-choice blocks. Each block contains six fixed binary choice tasks drawn from the 18 prespecified experimental choice sets.

The experimental profiles and attribute combinations within each block are constructed prior to data collection and are therefore not independently re-randomized for each respondent.

Randomization Unit

Individual respondent

Was the treatment clustered?