IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/kud/kucebi/2408.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Misperceived Social Norms and Willingness to Act Against Climate Change

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Andre

    (Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE)

  • Teodora Boneva

    (Department of Economics, University of Bonn)

  • Felix Chopra

    (Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen)

  • Armin Falk

    (Department of Economics, University of Bonn)

Abstract

We document the individual willingness to act against climate change and study the role of social norms in a large sample of US adults. Individual beliefs about social norms positively predict pro-climate donations, comparable in strength to universal moral values and economic preferences such as patience and reciprocity. However, we document systematic misperceptions of social norms. Respondents vastly underestimate the prevalence of climate-friendly behaviors and norms. Correcting these misperceptions inan experiment causally raises individual willingness to act against climate change as well as individual support for climate policies. The effects are strongest for individuals who are skeptical about the existence and threat of global warming.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Andre & Teodora Boneva & Felix Chopra & Armin Falk, 2024. "Misperceived Social Norms and Willingness to Act Against Climate Change," CEBI working paper series 08-24, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI).
    • Handle: RePEc:kud:kucebi:2408
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econ.ku.dk/cebi/publikationer/working-papers/CEBI_WP_08-24.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Climate change; climate behavior; climate policies; social norms; misperception; beliefs; economic preferences; moral values; survey experiments;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • Q51 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Valuation of Environmental Effects
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    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:kud:kucebi:2408. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Therese Moeller (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cebkudk.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.