IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jlands/v10y2021i3p240-d508121.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

To Mitigate or Adapt? Explaining Why Citizens Responding to Climate Change Favour the Former

Author

Listed:
  • Kristina Blennow

    (Department of Landscape Architecture, Planning and Management, SLU Alnarp, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 234 22 Lomma, Sweden)

  • Johannes Persson

    (Department of Philosophy, Lund University, 222 22 Lund, Sweden)

Abstract

Why do citizens’ decisions made because they favour the mitigation of climate change outnumber those made because they favour adaptation to its impacts? Using data collected in a survey of 338 citizens of Malmö, Sweden, we tested two hypotheses. H1: the motivation for personal decisions because they favour adaptation to the impacts of climate change correlates with the decision-making agent´s knowledge of specific local impacts of climate change, and H2: the motivation for personal decisions because they favour mitigation of climate change correlates with the risk perception of the decision-making agent. While decisions made because they favour mitigation correlated with negative net values of expected impacts of climate change (risk perception), decisions made because they favour adaptation correlated with its absolute value unless tipping point behaviour occurred. Tipping point behaviour occurs here when the decision-making agent abstains from decisions in response to climate change in spite of a strongly negative or positive net value of expected impacts. Hence, the decision-making agents´ lack of knowledge of specific climate change impacts inhibited decisions promoting adaptation. Moreover, positive experiences of climate change inhibited mitigation decisions. Discussing the results, we emphasised the importance of understanding the drivers of adaptation and mitigation decisions. In particular, we stress that attention needs to be paid to the balance between decisions solving problems ‘here and now’ and those focusing on the ‘there and then’.

Suggested Citation

  • Kristina Blennow & Johannes Persson, 2021. "To Mitigate or Adapt? Explaining Why Citizens Responding to Climate Change Favour the Former," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-13, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:10:y:2021:i:3:p:240-:d:508121
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/10/3/240/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/10/3/240/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wakker, Peter P, 2001. "Testing and Characterizing Properties of Nonadditive Measures through Violations of the Sure-Thing Principle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(4), pages 1039-1059, July.
    2. Tversky, Amos & Kahneman, Daniel, 1992. "Advances in Prospect Theory: Cumulative Representation of Uncertainty," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 297-323, October.
    3. Herbert A. Simon, 1955. "A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 69(1), pages 99-118.
    4. Johannes Persson & Kristina Blennow & Luísa Gonçalves & Alexander Borys & Ioan Dutcă & Jari Hynynen & Emilia Janeczko & Mariyana Lyubenova & Simon Martel & Jan Merganic & Katarína Merganičová & Mikko , 2020. "No polarization–Expected Values of Climate Change Impacts among European Forest Professionals and Scientists," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-12, March.
    5. Kapelner, Adam & Bleich, Justin, 2016. "bartMachine: Machine Learning with Bayesian Additive Regression Trees," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 70(i04).
    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. Kristina Blennow & Erik Persson & Johannes Persson, 2021. "DeveLoP—A Rationale and Toolbox for Democratic Landscape Planning," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(21), pages 1-20, November.

    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. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Olivier L’Haridon & Horst Zank, 2010. "Separating curvature and elevation: A parametric probability weighting function," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 41(1), pages 39-65, August.
    2. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    3. Robin Maximilian Stetzka & Stefan Winter, 2023. "How rational is gambling?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(4), pages 1432-1488, September.
    4. Leković Milјan, 2020. "Cognitive Biases as an Integral Part of Behavioral Finance," Economic Themes, Sciendo, vol. 58(1), pages 75-96, March.
    5. Brian Hill, 2009. "Confidence and ambiguity," Working Papers hal-00489870, HAL.
    6. Pope, Robin & Selten, Reinhard & Kube, Sebastian, 2009. "Nominalist Heuristics and Economic Theory," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 17/2009, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).
    7. Katarzyna Werner & Horst Zank, 2012. "Foundations for Prospect Theory Through Probability Midpoint Consistency," Economics Discussion Paper Series 1210, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    8. Ji, Xiangfeng & Chu, Yanyu, 2020. "A target-oriented bi-attribute user equilibrium model with travelers’ perception errors on the tolled traffic network," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    9. Sandri, Serena & Schade, Christian & Mußhoff, Oliver & Odening, Martin, 2010. "Holding on for too long? An experimental study on inertia in entrepreneurs' and non-entrepreneurs' disinvestment choices," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 30-44, October.
    10. Víctor González-Jiménez, 2021. "Incentive contracts when agents distort probabilities," Vienna Economics Papers vie2101, University of Vienna, Department of Economics.
    11. Enrico G. De Giorgi & David B. Brown & Melvyn Sim, 2010. "Dual representation of choice and aspirational preferences," University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2010 2010-07, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen.
    12. Matthew D. Rablen, 2023. "Loss Aversion, Risk Aversion, and the Shape of the Probability Weighting Function," Working Papers 2023013, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.
    13. repec:cup:judgdm:v:16:y:2021:i:6:p:1324-1369 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Martin G. Kocher & David Schindler & Stefan T. Trautmann & Yilong Xu, 2019. "Risk, time pressure, and selection effects," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 22(1), pages 216-246, March.
    15. F. Knobloch & J. -F. Mercure, 2016. "The behavioural aspect of green technology investments: a general positive model in the context of heterogeneous agents," Papers 1603.06888, arXiv.org.
    16. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Olivier L'Haridon & Corina Paraschiv, 2011. "Experienced vs. Described Uncertainty: Do We Need Two Prospect Theory Specifications?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(10), pages 1879-1895, October.
    17. Ralf Elbert & Lowis Seikowsky, 2017. "The influences of behavioral biases, barriers and facilitators on the willingness of forwarders’ decision makers to modal shift from unimodal road freight transport to intermodal road–rail freight tra," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 87(8), pages 1083-1123, November.
    18. Torgler, Benno, 2006. "The importance of faith: Tax morale and religiosity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 81-109, September.
    19. M. Rozina & М. Розина, 2019. "Теория и практика поведенческой экономики в процессе принятия финансовых решений // The Use of Theory and Methods of Behavioural Economics in the Process of Making Financial Decisions," Review of Business and Economics Studies // Review of Business and Economics Studies, Финансовый Университет // Financial University, vol. 7(3), pages 45-82.
    20. Hammond, Peter J & Zank, Horst, 2013. "Rationality and Dynamic Consistency under Risk and Uncertainty," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1033, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    21. Gary Charness & Thomas Garcia & Theo Offerman & Marie Claire Villeval, 2020. "Do measures of risk attitude in the laboratory predict behavior under risk in and outside of the laboratory?," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 60(2), pages 99-123, April.

    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:gam:jlands:v:10:y:2021:i:3:p:240-:d:508121. 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: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    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.