Cooperation in the Climate Commons

Abstract

Climate change is a global externality that has proven difficult to address through formal institutions alone due to the public good properties of climate change mitigation and the lack of a supranational institution for enforcing global treaties. Given these circumstances, which are arguably the most challenging for international cooperation, commitment problems and free-riding incentives for countries to delay costly mitigation efforts are major obstacles to effective environmental agreements. Starting from this premise, we examine domestic mitigation efforts, with the goal of assessing the extent to which the willingness of individuals to contribute voluntarily to the public good of climate mitigation could be scaled up to the global level. Although individual environmental actions are clearly insufficient for achieving ambitious global mitigation targets, we argue that they are nevertheless initial and essential steps in the right direction. In fact, individual and community efforts may be particularly important if local interventions encourage shifts in norms and behaviors that favor large-scale transformations. With this in mind, we discuss the importance of the visibility of norms and the role of beliefs when such visibility is lacking and their implications for leveraging cooperative behavior to increase climate mitigation efforts locally and globally.

Biased perceptions explain collective action deadlocks and suggest new mechanisms to prompt cooperation

“…The previous effects of perception bias on cooperation dynamics imply that (1) different biases may have an impact on achieving high levels of collective success and (2) interventions are likely to have a different impact depending on whether individuals in a given population reveal a specific bias. Reasoning about bias and incentives simultaneously also suggests comparing the effect of interventions based on (possibly monetary) incentives such as rewards and punishment ( Andreoni et al., 2003 ; Balliet et al., 2011 ; Couto et al., 2020 ; Dreber et al., 2008 ; Góis et al., 2019 ; Vasconcelos et al., 2013 ) with the effect of interventions that alter the information landscape available to individuals, akin to norm-based interventions ( Carattini et al., 2019 ; Miller and Prentice, 2016 ; Nyborg et al., 2016 ). Monetary incentives and information (media) campaigns are typical tools to change norms and behaviors ( Bicchieri, 2016 ).…”

“…As Bicchieri puts it, solving collective action traps may require a collective change of expectations ( Bicchieri, 2016 ). In this regard, our work provides a mechanistic understanding of how norm-based interventions (aiming at changing individuals' perceptions and expectations [ Carattini et al., 2019 ; Miller and Prentice, 2016 ; Prentice and Paluck, 2020 ; Tankard and Paluck, 2016 ]) and information design ( Mathevet et al., 2020 ) can be fundamental tools to trigger and sustain collective action.…”

Debates about vaccines and climate change on social media networks: a study in contrasts

“…Thirdly, both vaccine-generated herd immunity and reduced greenhouse gas emissions represent common-pool resources: they benefit everyone equally but the cost to maintain them is borne by individuals. Hence, there is a temptation to free-ride by enjoying the common resource without helping to support it 21,22,34,35 . Climate change is thought to be a particularly thorny common pool resource problem on account of the global scale of the commons involved 36 .…”

Emission Tax and Compensation Subsidy with Cross-Industry Pollution

“…In the above framework, no group lobbies for more stringent environmental policy, although one would expect public provision of public goods to be an important aspect of domestic policies. However, the importance of lobbying groups in making environmental policies has also been emphasized by economists such as Oates and Portney [58], Carattini et al [59], and Marchiori et al [60] and by scholars in environmental politics (e.g., Bryner [61], and Kamieniecki [62], on the US; Markussen and Svendsen [63], and Michaelowa [64], on Europe).…”