Nudging climate change mitigation: A laboratory experiment with inter-generational public goods

Artikel

To avoid the dangerous consequences of climate change, humans need to overcome two intertwined conflicts. First, they must deal with an intra-generational conflict that emerges from the allocation of costs of climate change mitigation among different actors of the current generation. Second, they face an inter-generational conflict that stems from the higher costs for long-term mitigation measures, particularly helping future generations, compared to the short-term actions aimed at adapting to the immediate effects of climate change, benefiting mostly the current generation. We devise a novel game to study this multi-level conflict and investigate individuals' behavior in a lab experiment. We find that, although individuals reach sufficient cooperation levels to avoid adverse consequences for their own generation, they contribute more to cheaper short-term than to costlier long-term measures, to the detriment of future generations. Simple "nudge" interventions, however, may alter this pattern considerably. We find that changing the default contribution level to the inter-generational welfare optimum increases long-term contributions. Moreover, providing individuals with the possibility to commit themselves to inter-generational solidarity leads to an even stronger increase in long-term contributions. Nevertheless, the results also suggest that nudges alone may not be enough to induce inter-generationally optimal contributions.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Journal: Games ; ISSN: 2073-4336 ; Volume: 11 ; Year: 2020 ; Issue: 4 ; Pages: 1-20 ; Basel: MDPI

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft
• Subject: climate change ; experiment ; inter-generational ; nudging ; social dilemma

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Böhm, Robert ; Gürerk, Özgür ; Lauer, Thomas
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): MDPI
• (where): Basel
• (when): 2020

Further information

• DOI: doi:10.3390/g11040042
• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/257460
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET