On Intertemporal Dependent Preferences with regard Environmental Goods and Services

Abstract

This note extends the standard theory of intertemporal consumer preferences with regard environmental goods and services. It proposes an intertemporal dependent preferences framework that generates a “persistence effect” consistent with consumer’s environmental friendly behaviours. Given the present civilizational and cultural pattern of preferences, consumers need to endure a learning-by-consuming process to full enjoy (and use) them, in order to commit himself with “green-economic behaviors". The contribution to the existing literature is two fold. First we consider the presence of habit-formation with regard the consumption of environmental goods and services in a two goods framework. Secondly, we establish a consistent preference structure that displays a bounded adjacent complementarity in the consumption of environmental goods and services and present the correspondent properties that need to bee fulfilled by the utility function.These extensions will allow new advances in environmental economics, especially in the complete characterization of the demand for environmental goods and services and for the sustainable growth debate.