IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/climat/v137y2016i1d10.1007_s10584-016-1670-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Collective responsibility amplifies mitigation behaviors

Author

Listed:
  • Nick Obradovich

    (University of California, San Diego)

  • Scott M. Guenther

    (University of California, San Diego)

Abstract

How can individuals be convinced to act on climate change? It is widely assumed that emphasizing personal responsibility for climate change is effective at increasing pro-climate behavior whereas collectively framing the causes of climate change diffuses responsibility and dampens the incentive for individual action. We observe the opposite result. Here we find, across three experiments, that emphasizing collective responsibility for the causes of climate change increases pro-climate monetary donations by approximately 7 % in environmental group members and by 50 % in the general public. Further, highlighting collective responsibility amplifies intent to reduce future carbon emissions. In contrast, focusing on personal responsibility for climate change does not significantly alter donations to climate change advocacy or the intent for future pro-climate behavior. These effects replicate and persist multiple days after treatment.

Suggested Citation

  • Nick Obradovich & Scott M. Guenther, 2016. "Collective responsibility amplifies mitigation behaviors," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 137(1), pages 307-319, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:climat:v:137:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1007_s10584-016-1670-9
    DOI: 10.1007/s10584-016-1670-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-016-1670-9
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10584-016-1670-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lara Aknin & Elizabeth Dunn & Michael Norton, 2012. "Happiness Runs in a Circular Motion: Evidence for a Positive Feedback Loop between Prosocial Spending and Happiness," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 347-355, April.
    2. S E Eden, 1993. "Individual Environmental Responsibility and its Role in Public Environmentalism," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 25(12), pages 1743-1758, December.
    3. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-838, May.
    4. Uri Gneezy & Stephan Meier & Pedro Rey-Biel, 2011. "When and Why Incentives (Don't) Work to Modify Behavior," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 25(4), pages 191-210, Fall.
    5. Adrian Brügger & Suraje Dessai & Patrick Devine-Wright & Thomas A. Morton & Nicholas F. Pidgeon, 2015. "Psychological responses to the proximity of climate change," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 5(12), pages 1031-1037, December.
    6. Tomz, Michael & Van Houweling, Robert P., 2009. "The Electoral Implications of Candidate Ambiguity," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 103(1), pages 83-98, February.
    7. Kjell Arne Brekke & Olof Johansson-Stenman, 2008. "The behavioural economics of climate change," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 24(2), pages 280-297, Summer.
    8. Bolsen, Toby & Druckman, James N. & Cook, Fay Lomax, 2014. "Communication and Collective Actions: A Survey Experiment on Motivating Energy Conservation in the U.S," Journal of Experimental Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1(1), pages 24-38, April.
    9. Berinsky, Adam J. & Huber, Gregory A. & Lenz, Gabriel S., 2012. "Evaluating Online Labor Markets for Experimental Research: Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(3), pages 351-368, July.
    10. Peter D. Howe & Matto Mildenberger & Jennifer R. Marlon & Anthony Leiserowitz, 2015. "Geographic variation in opinions on climate change at state and local scales in the USA," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 5(6), pages 596-603, June.
    11. Ezra M. Markowitz & Azim F. Shariff, 2012. "Climate change and moral judgement," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 2(4), pages 243-247, 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. Long Huang & Wansheng Lei & Fuming Xu & Hairong Liu & Liang Yu & Fujun Shi & Lei Wang, 2020. "Maxims nudge equitable or efficient choices in a Trade-Off Game," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(6), pages 1-13, June.
    2. Adelle Thomas & Lisa Benjamin, 2018. "Perceptions of climate change risk in The Bahamas," Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Springer;Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences, vol. 8(1), pages 63-72, March.
    3. Nick Obradovich, 2017. "Climate change may speed democratic turnover," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 140(2), pages 135-147, January.
    4. Joseph P. Lavallee & Bruno Giusto & Tai-Yi Yu, 2019. "Collective responsibility framing also leads to mitigation behavior in East Asia: a replication study in Taiwan," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 153(3), pages 423-438, April.
    5. Jackie Parker & Greg D Simpson & Jonathon Edward Miller, 2020. "Nature-Based Solutions Forming Urban Intervention Approaches to Anthropogenic Climate Change: A Quantitative Literature Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(18), pages 1-18, September.
    6. D. Liliana González-Hernández & Erik W. Meijles & Frank Vanclay, 2019. "Household Barriers to Climate Change Action: Perspectives from Nuevo Leon, Mexico," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(15), pages 1-14, August.
    7. Nicole H. O’Donnell & Jeanine P. D. Guidry, 2022. "Beyond Personal Responsibility: Analyzing How Attributing Responsibility for Environmental Protection Can Hinder Action," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(20), pages 1-15, October.

    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. Jasmijn Bol & Lisa Laviers & Jason Sandvik, 2023. "Creativity Contests: An Experimental Investigation of Eliciting Employee Creativity," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(1), pages 47-94, March.
    2. Anne K. Armstrong & Marianne E. Krasny, 2020. "Tracing Paths from Research to Practice in Climate Change Education," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(11), pages 1-21, June.
    3. Joseph P. Lavallee & Bruno Giusto & Tai-Yi Yu, 2019. "Collective responsibility framing also leads to mitigation behavior in East Asia: a replication study in Taiwan," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 153(3), pages 423-438, April.
    4. Adam Seth Levine & Reuben Kline, 2017. "A new approach for evaluating climate change communication," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 142(1), pages 301-309, May.
    5. Hayam Elshirbiny & Wokje Abrahamse, 2020. "Public risk perception of climate change in Egypt: a mixed methods study of predictors and implications," Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Springer;Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences, vol. 10(3), pages 242-254, September.
    6. Shreedhar, Ganga & Mourato, Susana, 2019. "Experimental Evidence on the Impact of Biodiversity Conservation Videos on Charitable Donations," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 180-193.
    7. Goff, Sandra H., 2021. "A test of willingness to pay as penance in the demand for ethical consumption," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    8. Dominik Schreyer, 2019. "Football spectator no-show behaviour in the German Bundesliga," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(45), pages 4882-4901, September.
    9. S. Arunachalam & Sridhar N. Ramaswami & Pol Herrmann & Doug Walker, 2018. "Innovation pathway to profitability: the role of entrepreneurial orientation and marketing capabilities," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 46(4), pages 744-766, July.
    10. Timothy Erickson & Toni M. Whited, 2000. "Measurement Error and the Relationship between Investment and q," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(5), pages 1027-1057, October.
    11. van den Bergh, J.C.J.M. & Botzen, W.J.W., 2015. "Monetary valuation of the social cost of CO2 emissions: A critical survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 33-46.
    12. Paul W. Miller & Barry R. Chiswick, 2002. "Immigrant earnings: Language skills, linguistic concentrations and the business cycle," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 15(1), pages 31-57.
    13. Fors, Gunnar & Zejan, Mario, 1996. "Overseas R&D by Multinationals in foreign Centers of Excellence," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 111, Stockholm School of Economics.
    14. Rodrigo M. S. Moita & Claudio Paiva, 2013. "Political Price Cycles in Regulated Industries: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 94-121, February.
    15. Evens Salies & Catherine Waddams, 2003. "Pricing structure in the deregulated UK electricity market," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03592457, HAL.
    16. Butler, Marty & Leone, Andrew J. & Willenborg, Michael, 2004. "An empirical analysis of auditor reporting and its association with abnormal accruals," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 139-165, June.
    17. Baiyegunhi, L.J.S. & Oppong, B.B., 2016. "Commercialisation of mopane worm (Imbrasia belina) in rural households in Limpopo Province, South Africa," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 141-148.
    18. MacKinnon, J G, 1989. "Heteroskedasticity-Robust Tests for Structural Change," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 77-92.
    19. Fenech, Jean-Pierre & Skully, Michael & Xuguang, Han, 2014. "Franking credits and market reactions: Evidence from the Australian convertible security market," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 1-19.
    20. François Desmoulins-Lebeault & Jean-François Gajewski & Luc Meunier, 2018. "Personality and Risk Aversion," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 38(1), pages 472-489.

    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:spr:climat:v:137:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1007_s10584-016-1670-9. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.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.