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THEME 3 | Development And Sustainability

24 AUGUST 2021 (Tuesday) - Singapore Time
14:00 - 15:30 THEME 3 | DEVELOPMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY
Moderator: Elmie Nekmat The Role of Attention in Resource Conservation: Evidence from Field Experiments

Lorenz Goette | Department of Economics, NUS

Household Responses to Environmental Degradation

Alberto Salvo | Department of Economics and the Global Asia Institute, NUS

Projecting the Future Household and Living Arrangement

Feng Qiushi | Department of Sociology and the Centre for Family and Population Research, NUS

Abstracts

The Role of Attention in Resource Conservation:
Evidence from Field Experiments

Professor Lorenz Goette

Resource conservation is a key policy lever to achieve Singapore’s sustainability objectives under the Paris Climate Accord. In this talk, I highlight the role of limited attention by individuals in resource conservation. In several large-scale field experiments, I show how real-time feedback on resource use can lead to significant conservation effects. Providing feedback on water use on showering, using a smart shower meter reduces water use by 15 to 20 percent - far more than what traditional interventions can achieve. This highlights the key role of attention, as the individuals in our experiments receive feedback in real time, as they engage in the behavior. I also show how goals can help increase conservation effects, and test whether providing feedback on one particular resource use has positive spillover effects on other behaviors as well. In addition to the field experiments, I also report evidence from an evaluation of a recent policy pilot, the Singapore Smart Shower Programme, in which 10,000 households were equipped with feedback technology.

Household Responses to Environmental Degradation
Associate Professor Alberto Salvo

The presentation will cover work from different empirical projects under the unifying theme of household responses to environmental degradation, e.g., how households use resources (electricity, water, food delivery and plastic waste, air conditioned workplaces and shopping malls, urban parks in the early evening) to protect or relieve themselves from heat, air pollution, or other environmental harms. Given the forum’s focus computational social science, it will highlight work based on data collected in Singapore and their broad applicability.

Projecting the Future Household and Living Arrangement
Associate Professor Feng Qiushi

Our world is witnessing substantial transformations in household and living arrangment. Household size is steadily declining and shed huge influence on energy con-sumption, environment, and sustainable development, as water, electricity, gas, vehicles, appliances, furniture, banking/financing, and many other resources, commodities, and ser-vices are often purchased and consumed by households rather than individuals. This presentation introduces ProFamy, a projection methods with innovative computational strategies and highlight its recent applications in the sub-national levels. It is concluded that now has never been a better time to apply this method to Asian societies.

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