Arbeitspapier
Climate action for (my) children
Sustaining large-scale public goods, such as the environment, requires individuals to take action; however, motivating voluntary climate action (VCA) is difficult because decision-makers today do not stand to benefit from their investments. Here, we propose that parents invest more in VCA if their link to future generations-through their offspring-is made salient. In a novel lab-in-the-field experiment, we vary whether parents are observed during a VCA decision (i.e., investing in planting real-world trees) by their own child. In addition to a no-observer control, we run additional control conditions with an unrelated adult or an unrelated child observing the parent decision-maker. As predicted, VCA varies across conditions, with larger treatment effects occurring when a parent's own child is the observer. In subgroup analyses, larger treatment effects occur among more educated parents. As a result of this study, VCA across conditions led to 14,000 trees being planted, offsetting approximately 8% of participants' annual CO2 emissions for around four generations.
- Sprache
-
Englisch
- Erschienen in
-
Series: Working Papers in Economics and Statistics ; No. 2020-23
- Klassifikation
-
Wirtschaft
Design of Experiments: Other
Valuation of Environmental Effects
Climate; Natural Disasters and Their Management; Global Warming
Publicly Provided Goods: Other
Household Behavior and Family Economics: Other
- Thema
-
voluntary climate action
intergenerational cooperation
parents
children
observability
lab-in-the-field experiment
- Ereignis
-
Geistige Schöpfung
- (wer)
-
Fornwagner, Helena
Hauser, Oliver P.
- Ereignis
-
Veröffentlichung
- (wer)
-
University of Innsbruck, Research Platform Empirical and Experimental Economics (eeecon)
- (wo)
-
Innsbruck
- (wann)
-
2020
- Handle
- Letzte Aktualisierung
-
10.03.2025, 11:41 MEZ
Datenpartner
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.
Objekttyp
- Arbeitspapier
Beteiligte
- Fornwagner, Helena
- Hauser, Oliver P.
- University of Innsbruck, Research Platform Empirical and Experimental Economics (eeecon)
Entstanden
- 2020