The European Union and Germany have recently committed themselves to greenhouse-gas neutrality by 2050 and 2045, respectively. This substantially reduces their <em>gaps in</em> <em>ambition</em> to the Paris climate goals. However, the current climate policy mix is not sufficient to reach these targets: There is a major <em>implementation gap</em>. Based on economic, legal, and political science perspectives<em>, </em>this article identifies key obstacles in legislating stringent climate policy instruments and making them effective. Using a simple framework, we map the stage of the process in which the obstacles are at work. Moreover, we discuss the potential effectiveness of a select list of prominent drivers of climate-related regulation in overcoming said obstacles and conclude by pointing towards conditions for closing the implementation gap. In doing so, we focus on the current legislative processes of the “Fit-for-55” package by the European Commission and the 2021 Federal Climate Change Act in Germany. Our analysis builds on the extant literature, and we suggest avenues for further research.

We test the hypothesis that protest participation decisions in an adult population of potential climate protesters are interdependent. Subjects (n = 1, 510) from the four largest German cities were recruited two weeks before protest date. We measured participation (ex post) and beliefs about the other subjects' participation (ex ante) in an online survey, used a randomized informational intervention to induce exogenous variance in beliefs, and estimated the causal effect of a change in belief on the probability of participation using a control function approach. Participation decisions are found to be strategic substitutes: a one percentage-point increase of belief causes a .67 percentage-point decrease in the probability of participation in the average subject.

Information avoidance is common when privately beneficial choices have uncertain and potentially adverse effects on others. A dominant theory holds that such “strategic ignorance” allows decision makers to circumvent inner moral conflict while acting self-servingly. In extension of this theory, we hypothesize that time pressure elevates the prevalence of strategic ignorance. We conduct a laboratory experiment with resolvable payoff uncertainty to test this hypothesis. We find that time pressure indeed significantly increases the incidence of information avoidance. As a result, self-serving choices are more common than in a baseline without time pressure. We empirically explore several potential interpretations of this main finding. First, in a control condition, in which payoffs are fully transparent, time pressure has no direct effect on self-serving behavior. This speaks against a general tendency to act more self-servingly or fairly under time pressure. Second, a follow-up study shows that information avoidance under time pressure is attributable to conflict avoidance, rather than providing decision makers with a convenient excuse for not becoming informed. We discuss these observations in the context of a recent body of literature on the cognitive underpinnings of prosocial behavior and argue that they have significant implications for information-based approaches to public policy.

Information avoidance is common when privately beneficial choices have uncertain and potentially adverse effects on others. A dominant theory holds that such "strategic ignorance" allows decision makers to circumvent inner moral conflict while acting self-servingly. In extension of this theory, we hypothesize that time pressure elevates the prevalence of strategic ignorance. We conduct a laboratory experiment with resolvable payoff uncertainty to test this hypothesis. We find that time pressure indeed significantly increases the incidence of information avoidance. As a result, self-serving choices are more common than in a baseline without time pressure. We use supplementary data to explore several potential interpretations of this main finding. First, in a control condition, in which payoffs are fully transparent, time pressure has no direct effect on self-serving behavior. This speaks against a general tendency to act more self-servingly or fairly under time pressure. Second, a follow-up study shows that information avoidance under time pressure is due to conflict avoidance, rather than providing decision makers with a convenient excuse for not becoming informed. We discuss these observations in the context of a recent body of literature on the cognitive underpinnings of pro-social behavior and argue that they have significant implications for information-based approaches to public policy.

We test the hypothesis that protest participation decisions in an adult population of potential climate protesters are interdependent. Subjects (n=1,510) from the four largest German cities were recruited two weeks before protest date. We measured participation (ex post) and beliefs about the other subjects' participation (ex ante) in an online survey, used a randomized informational intervention to induce exogenous variance in beliefs, and estimated the causal effect of a change in belief on the probability of participation using a control function approach. Participation decisions are found to be strategic substitutes: a one percentage-point increase of belief causes a .67 percentage-point decrease in the probability of participation in the average subject.