Today, consumers have the opportunity to purchase a wide variety of environmentally friendly products that include; “green” foods, furniture, vehicles, buildings and electric power.  The Toyota Prius stands out as one of the leading examples of this new trend.  If consumers purchase such products, then this would encourage for profit firms to develop more of them.   At a point in time, who buys these “green” products?   More patient people will value the future energy savings from more efficient appliances.  People are more likely to seek out “greener” durables when the price of energy inputs is high. Environmentalists are also more likely to purchase such products.  This project uses GIS mapping technology and new data sets at the zip code level to provide new facts concerning the geographical distribution of who purchases green products.   This project is joint research with Ryan Vaughn. Ryan is a graduate student in UCLA’s Economics Department.

Download File: Kahn_vaughn.pdf

Published: Tuesday, July 08, 2008