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

Dieses Objekt wird bereitgestellt von:
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

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