On Individualism and Environmental Quality

We examine whether a society's orientation toward individualism causally influences per capita carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. We conceptualize the link through a collective action framework: because atmospheric quality is a global public good, its provision requires coordinated restraint, and cultural individualism, which places primacy on personal autonomy over group norms, is predicted to erode precisely the internalization of collective costs that pro-environmental behavior demands. We show that a one-point increase in Hofstede's individualism index is associated with an increase of approximately 0.04 metric tons of CO2 per capita. Endogeneity is addressed using blood-type genetic distance and confirm our results.