IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/zewdip/10049.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Coordinating to protect the global climate: Experimental evidence on the role of inequality and commitment

Author

Listed:
  • Tavoni, Alessandro
  • Dannenberg, Astrid
  • Löschel, Andreas

Abstract

Free riding and coordination difficulties are held to be the primary causes of cooperation breakdown among nonrelatives. These thwarting effects are particularly severe in the absence of effective monitoring institutions capable of sanctioning deviant behavior. Unfortunately, solutions to global environmental dilemmas, like climate change, cannot depend on coercion mechanisms, given the transnational effects of emissions. A further complication is that it yields 'common but differentiated responsibilities'. Such asymmetries in wealth and carbon responsibilities among the actors, and the ensuing issues of equity, might further impede cooperation. Yet, a growing literature stresses the importance of non-economic factors in explaining human behavior; therefore, instruments that go beyond the traditional incentives might prove effective in facilitating the task. Given the empirical nature of the problem, we address it by means of a controlled laboratory experiment: a framed threshold public goods game is used to investigate the degree of cooperation and coordination achieved by groups of six participants in combating simulated catastrophic climate change. While necessarily simple for the sake of tractability, the game is designed to incorporate key real-world issues, such as inequity and the impact of emergent institutions based on nonbinding 'pledge and review' mechanisms.

Suggested Citation

  • Tavoni, Alessandro & Dannenberg, Astrid & Löschel, Andreas, 2010. "Coordinating to protect the global climate: Experimental evidence on the role of inequality and commitment," ZEW Discussion Papers 10-049, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:zewdip:10049
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/37075/1/632111216.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lange, Andreas & Löschel, Andreas & Vogt, Carsten & Ziegler, Andreas, 2010. "On the self-interested use of equity in international climate negotiations," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 359-375, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Clemens Heuson & Wolfgang Peters & Reimund Schwarze & Anna-Katharina Topp, 2015. "Voluntary International Climate Finance Under The Post-Kyoto Framework: The Strategic Consequences Of Different Modes Of Funding," Climate Change Economics (CCE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 6(03), pages 1-26.
    2. Güth, Werner & Levati, M. Vittoria & Soraperra, Ivan, 2015. "Common and private signals in public goods games with a point of no return," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 164-184.
    3. Robert C. Schmidt, 2017. "Dynamic cooperation with tipping points in the climate system," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 69(2), pages 388-409.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Andreas Löschel & Dirk Rübbelke, 2014. "On the Voluntary Provision of International Public Goods," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 81(322), pages 195-204, April.
    2. Brekke, Kjell Arne & Konow, James & Nyborg, Karine, 2017. "Framing in a threshold public goods experiment with heterogeneous endowments," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 99-110.
    3. Peter H. Kriss & George Loewenstein & Xianghong Wang & Roberto A. Weber, 2011. "Behind the veil of ignorance: Self-serving bias in climate change negotiations," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 6(7), pages 602-615, October.
    4. Dannenberg, Astrid & Löschel, Andreas & Paolacci, Gabriele & Reif, Christiane & Tavoni, Alessandro, 2011. "Coordination under threshold uncertainty in a public goods game," ZEW Discussion Papers 11-065, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    5. Wolfgang Buchholz & Cornelia Ohl & Aneta Ufert, 2012. "Ökonomische Blickwinkel auf Gerechtigkeitsfragen am Beispiel des globalen Klimaschutzes," Discussion Paper Series RECAP15 001, RECAP15, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder).
    6. Marco Vincenzi, 2023. "Mapping the empirical relationship between environmental performance and social preferences: Evidence from macro data," ECONOMICS AND POLICY OF ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2023(1), pages 85-102.
    7. Kanberger, Elke D. & Ziegler, Andreas, 2023. "On the preferences for an environmentally friendly and fair energy transition: A stated choice experiment for Germany," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    8. Lisandra Flach & Johannes Pfeiffer & Karen Pittel, 2022. "Fairness und Eigeninteresse im internationalen Klimaschutz [Fairness and Self-Interest in International Climate Protection]," Wirtschaftsdienst, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 102(1), pages 12-20, May.
    9. Olof Johansson-Stenman & James Konow, 2010. "Fair Air: Distributive Justice and Environmental Economics," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 46(2), pages 147-166, June.
    10. Nyborg, Karine, 2018. "Reciprocal climate negotiators," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 707-725.
    11. Ziegler, Andreas & Busch, Timo & Hoffmann, Volker H., 2011. "Disclosed corporate responses to climate change and stock performance: An international empirical analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 1283-1294.
    12. Carsten Vogt, 2016. "Climate Coalition Formation When Players are Heterogeneous and Inequality Averse," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 65(1), pages 33-59, September.
    13. Rachel Croson & Nicolas Treich, 2014. "Behavioral Environmental Economics: Promises and Challenges," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 58(3), pages 335-351, July.
    14. Waichman, Israel & Requate, Till & Karde, Markus & Milinski, Manfred, 2021. "Challenging conventional wisdom: Experimental evidence on heterogeneity and coordination in avoiding a collective catastrophic event," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    15. Dobes Leo & Jotzo Frank & Stern David I., 2014. "The Economics of Global Climate Change: A Historical Literature Review," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 65(3), pages 281-320, December.
    16. Ronghuo Zheng & Tinglong Dai & Katia Sycara & Nilanjan Chakraborty, 2016. "Automated Multilateral Negotiation on Multiple Issues with Private Information," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 28(4), pages 612-628, November.
    17. Max Meulemann, 2017. "An Empirical Assessment Of Components Of Climate Architectures," Climate Change Economics (CCE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 8(04), pages 1-36, November.
    18. Schleich, Joachim & Dütschke, Elisabeth & Schwirplies, Claudia & Ziegler, Andreas, 2014. "Citizens' perceptions of justice in international climate policy: Empirical insights from China, Germany and the US," Working Papers "Sustainability and Innovation" S2/2014, Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI).
    19. P. Ding & M. D. Gerst & G. Bang & M. E. Borsuk, 2015. "An Application of Automated Mediation to International Climate Treaty Negotiation," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 24(5), pages 885-903, September.
    20. Hoffmann, Sönke & Mihm, Benedikt & Weimann, Joachim, 2015. "To commit or not to commit? An experimental investigation of pre-commitments in bargaining situations with asymmetric information," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 95-105.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    experimental economics; threshold public goods game; climate change; inequality; pledge;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:zewdip:10049. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zemande.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.