New Empirical Evidence: Consumer Support for Environmental Restoration Projects

How to read this study. This was a stated-choice experiment: participants made their decisions in a simulated booking with no money at stake. It measures appetite and platform preference. Our subsequent airline studies measure consequential donation behavior in Phase 1 of three simulated booking experiments; this study is the reason we ran them.

Why we ran this study

Most travelers say they care about the environment, yet very few take action at the moments where it would count. The booking checkout is one of those moments: a high-intent, high-spend decision point where a small, well-designed ask could turn stated concern into contributions. We wanted to know whether people would choose a reforestation contribution when offered the chance during a flight purchase, and whether being asked changed how they felt about the platform doing the asking.

How we tested it

Participants (n = 36) completed a realistic flight-booking flow on a simulated online travel agency. At checkout, they were offered an easy, one-tap option to add a reforestation contribution to their purchase, framed as 10% of the ticket price and going to Rainforest Trust. The choice was hypothetical: no participant paid for a ticket or a contribution, so the decision cost them nothing. Participants who declined saw a short confirmation prompt before their choice was final. We then measured who opted in, how the contribution option affected preference between a platform with the feature and a baseline platform, and participants' stated likelihood of booking again.

Key findings

• 69% of participants chose to add the contribution (64% at the first ask; the remainder accepted after the confirmation prompt).
• 75% preferred the online travel agency that offered an easy-to-use contribution feature at checkout, including both donors and decliners.
• A significant number of participants said they would be more likely to book on a platform offering an easy way to contribute, even at higher ticket prices.
• Stated perceptions of the platform and likelihood of future use remained steady with the donation option present.

Asking customers to give at checkout can build goodwill, even among those who decline.

What a stated choice tells you

Because nothing was at stake, the 69% is an appetite ceiling. Live behavior calls for a separate planning number:

• 69% is stated intent in this hypothetical study: what people choose when choosing costs nothing.
• ~5% is the conservative opt-in rate we'd plan around in a live checkout. This is a deployment expectation for real customers spending real money.

Even at that conservative rate, checkout contributions generate meaningful conservation funding at the scale of online travel booking, and our airline studies, where Phase 1 participants gave from study payments, confirm that an integrated request can move consequential giving. Their baseline and redesigned rates ranged from 17.8% to 35.8% across the three experiments.

What the contribution funds

A checkout donation funds reforestation and conservation work. Responsibility for the flight's emissions remains with the airline's operations. We study whether a better-designed prompt moves more people to fund conservation voluntarily, and whether being asked well changes how they regard the brand that asked.

What this means for implementation

Reforestation contributions can be implemented quickly and at negligible cost:

• Integration requires only a basic change to the checkout and payment workflow. No new infrastructure is needed.
• Rainforest Trust is already equipped to accept contributions from partner platforms.

Methods and provenance

36 participants completed a simulated OTA booking online. Each rated a checkout with the contribution feature and a baseline checkout, then chose between the two agencies. The primary outcomes were the opt-in decision (with a confirmation prompt for decliners), platform preference, and stated booking intent on 7-point scales. All decisions were hypothetical, and the study was exploratory. The full dataset is public on the Open Science Framework: osf.io/8yk2a. The small sample, hypothetical stakes, and social-desirability pressure of being asked twice make 69% an appetite signal; consequential studies provide the next behavioral measure.

Related work

This study established that travelers say they will give at checkout. Our subsequent airline experiments asked how an integrated request changes what people do when Phase 1 contributions come from study payments. The research supports the request package as a whole; its later amount comparisons report hypothetical projected donations. See Increasing Environmental Giving at Airline Checkout.

Open data

The full dataset and materials are available on the Open Science Framework: osf.io/8yk2a.