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The Al Gore Effect: An Inconvenient Truth and
Voluntary Carbon Offsets∗
[Job Market Paper]

Grant Jacobsen
University of California-Santa Barbara

2120 North Hall
University of California
Santa Barbara, 93106-9210

jacobsen@econ.ucsb.edu
Phone: (717) 315-5503
Fax: (805) 893-8830

I thank Matthew Kotchen, Robert Deacon, Olivier Deschenes, and Charles Kolstad for helpful comments.
I also thank participants at a UCSB seminar, the Western Economics International Association’s Conference, and the University of Colorado Environmental and Resource Economics Workshop.


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The Al Gore Effect: An Inconvenient Truth and Voluntary Carbon Offsets
Abstract
This paper examines the relationship between climate change awareness and household behavior by testing whether Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth caused an increase in the purchase of voluntary carbon offsets. I find that in the two months following the film’s release, zip codes within a 10-mile radius of a zip code where the film was shown experienced a 50 percent relative increase in the purchase of voluntary carbon offsets. During other times, offset purchasing patterns for zip codes inside the
10-mile radius were similar to the patterns of zip codes outside the 10-mile radius.
There is, however, little evidence that individuals who purchased an offset due to the film renewed them again a year later. This research has implications for how information campaigns, which are commonly used by policy-makers to address market failures, affect the behavior of households.

Keywords: climate change, voluntary carbon offsets, al gore, an inconvenient truth, awareness campaign

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Introduction

Awareness campaigns that promote behavioral change exist across a wide spectrum of concerns, including health (e.g., National Breast Cancer Awareness Month events that encourage screening), political

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