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Carbon is Forever: a Climate Change Experiment on Cooperation

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  • G. Calzolari
  • M. Casari
  • R. Ghidoni

Abstract

Greenhouse gases generate impacts that can last longer than human civilization itself. Such persistence may affect the behavioral ability to cooperate. Here we study mitigation efforts within a framework that reflects key features of climate change and then contrasts a dynamic versus a static setting. In a treatment with persistence, the pollution cumulates and generates damages over time while in another treatment it has only immediate effects and then disappears. We find that cooperation is not hampered, on average, by pollution persistence. Mitigation efforts, though, should not be delayed, because cooperation levels appear to deteriorate for high stocks of pollution.

Suggested Citation

  • G. Calzolari & M. Casari & R. Ghidoni, 2016. "Carbon is Forever: a Climate Change Experiment on Cooperation," Working Papers wp1065, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    • Handle: RePEc:bol:bodewp:wp1065
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    Cited by:

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    2. Meléndez-Jiménez, Miguel A. & Polanski, Arnold, 2020. "Dirty neighbors — Pollution in an interlinked world," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    3. Ghidoni, Riccardo & Calzolari, Giacomo & Casari, Marco, 2017. "Climate change: Behavioral responses from extreme events and delayed damages," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(S1), pages 103-115.
    4. Pevnitskaya, Svetlana & Ryvkin, Dmitry, 2022. "The effect of access to clean technology on pollution reduction: An experiment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 117-141.
    5. Filipe Duarte Santos & Tim O’Riordan & Miguel Rocha de Sousa & Jiesper Strandsbjerg Tristan Pedersen, 2023. "The Six Critical Determinants That May Act as Human Sustainability Boundaries on Climate Change Action," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(1), pages 1-20, December.
    6. Riccardo Ghidoni & Anna Lou Abatayo & Valentina Bosetti & Marco Casari & Massimo Tavoni, 2023. "Governing Climate Geoengineering: Side Payments Are Not Enough," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 10(5), pages 1149-1177.
    7. Roggenkamp, Hauke C., 2024. "Revisiting ‘Growth and Inequality in Public Good Provision’—Reproducing and Generalizing Through Inconvenient Online Experimentation," OSF Preprints 6rn97, Center for Open Science.
    8. Sanjit Dhami & Narges Hajimoladarvish & Pavan Mamidi, 2023. "Climate Change Risk, and Human Behavior: Theory and Evidence," CESifo Working Paper Series 10678, CESifo.
    9. Ghidoni, Riccardo & Cleave, Blair L. & Suetens, Sigrid, 2019. "Perfect and imperfect strangers in social dilemmas," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 148-159.
    10. Yu-Hsuan Lin, 2018. "How social preferences influence the stability of a climate coalition," ECONOMICS AND POLICY OF ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 0(2), pages 151-166.
    11. Nicola Campigotto & Marco Catola & Simone D’Alessandro & Pietro Guarnieri & Lorenzo Spadoni, 2023. "Curbing Energy Consumption through Voluntary Quotas: Experimental Evidence," Discussion Papers 2023/299, Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C70 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - General
    • C90 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - General
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

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