PhD research: 'Even the threat of an environmental campaign can be effective'

Pim Heijnen has designed mathematical models that reflect the strategic interactions in environmental-economic problems. One example is the activities of Greenpeace.

Heijnen differentiates between the revealing of new abuses, still unknown to consumers, and situations that consumers are already aware of but whose seriousness is underestimated.

In the first case the environmental organization faces the problem of convincing consumers that they are not deliberately twisting the facts. After all, an environmental group is not automatically a supplier of reliable information.

It is a bit simpler if the abuse is already known: examples include eating meat or wearing fur where consumers know that animals have had to be slaughtered. An environmental group then only has to emphasize the cruelty of the methods. The business sector, however, can anticipate this and decide to produce in a more environmentally or animal-friendly manner in future. Thus threatening a campaign can already be very effective, concludes Heijnen.

Heijnen also examined the national spread of the DIFTAR taxation system, part of the municipal waste collection levy where the amount owed is based on the amount of waste that the consumer presents.

CV
Pim Heijnen (Emmen, 1979) will be awarded a PhD in Economics on 11 January 2007 (4.15 p.m.). His supervisor is Prof. P. Kooreman. The thesis is entitled Strategic interactions in environmental economics. Heijnen will continue his work as a postdoc at the Center for Nonlinear Dynamics in Economics and Finance at the University of Amsterdam.