Effective cooperation leading to support of reforestation via a ‘climate public goods game’ in the Chinese collectivistic society

Abstract

Theories on evolution of cooperation assume that interacting individuals can change their strategies under different expected payoffs and cultural contexts. The willingness to invest resources into partners and to cooperate may therefore vary in collectivistic Eastern Asia as opposed to more individualistic Western countries partly because of cultural differences. An experiment was implemented examining the willingness of young Chinese subjects to mitigate the consequences of climate change in a country severely affected by air pollution. Following a design already implemented in Germany (Jacquet et al. 2013 Nat Clim Change), we set up a public goods game in which groups of six students had to reach a minimum investment threshold to be able to save funds for a reforestation project to curb climate change. Differently from the German model in which none of the groups managed to reach the threshold, five out of eight Chinese groups cooperate successfully to reach the reforestation goal. We attribute to cultural differences of individualism and collectivism the main explanation for these different results. In China, in fact, collectivistic values allow for the emergence of this environmentally driven cooperation.