The role of households in financing the move towards a sustainable economy: results from a lab-in-the-field experiment in Italy

Based on survey data from a lab-in-the-field experiment ran in October-November 2024 in different branches of a large Italian bank, this paper presents results on the household Willingness to Pay (WTP) for sustainable assets with the final aim to explore the effect of a visual treatment and possible differences across the three different dimensions of sustainability, i.e. E, S and G. Main results from the analyses by means of a linear regression model can be summarized as follows. First, the estimate for the negative visual treatment reaches 10% statistical significance, whereby the positive one is not significant, thus implying that the exposure to a negative visual treatment, by contrast to a positive one, is associated to an average increase the WTP for ESG. Second, both treatments are not significant once the model is augmented with an additional set of controls, with the WTP lower for graduated individuals, but higher for those with an investment horizon between 1 and 5 years and among those engaged in volunteering and concerned about the climate change. Third, when dissecting results by the factor of interest, the negative visual treatment significantly increases the WTP for the E dimension only. This result hints to household investors not considering sustainability as a multidimensional concept, but it is encouraging considering that the treatment used leveraged on the environmental dimension only. This seems to suggest that, with the correct leverage, the demand for ESG assets and a potentially positive WTP for them can be stimulated with obvious industry and policy implications.