Christopher Blackburn, a doctoral student in the School of Economics at Georgia Institute of Technology, presented a paper titled “Do Pilot Programs Alter Non-participant Behavior: Evidence from a Green Building Standard” at the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) 39th Annual Fall Research Conference on November 2 - 4, 2017, in Chicago, Illinois.

The research investigates whether experimental programs confer positive externalities on non-participants of the program by exploring whether the completion of these programs impact the likelihood non-participants adopt technologies and practices piloted by others. In addition, researchers explore the potential pathways by which experimentation can affect non-participant behavior. The questions were studied under the institutional context of the Leadership of Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building standard. LEED is a voluntary certification program for sustainability.

The paper was jointly authored with Mallory Flowers, a postdoctoral researcher in Strategy and Entrepreneurship in the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University, Daniel Matisoff, associate professor in the School of Public Policy, and Juan Moreno-Cruz, associate professor in the School of Economics.

Blackburn is a Serve-Learn-Sustain (SLS) Energy Systems for Sustainable Communities (ESSC) Fellow and National Science Foundation (NSF) Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) Fellow. The School of Public Policy and Economics are units in the Georgia Tech Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.

For more information on the conference, visit the APAM official website.