Inequality, communication, and the avoidance of disastrous climate change in a public goods game

Abstract

International efforts to provide global public goods often face the challenges of coordinating national contributions and distributing costs equitably in the face of uncertainty, inequality, and free-riding incentives. In an experimental setting, we distribute endowments unequally among a group of people who can reach a fixed target sum through successive money contributions, knowing that if they fail, they will lose all their remaining money with 50% probability. In some treatments, we give players the option to communicate intended contributions. We find that inequality reduces the prospects of reaching the target but that communication increases success dramatically. Successful groups tend to eliminate inequality over the course of the game, with rich players signaling willingness to redistribute early on. Our results suggest that coordination-promoting institutions and early redistribution from richer to poorer nations are both decisive for the avoidance of global calamities, such as disruptive climate change.

Ratchet Up or Down? An Experimental Investigation of Global Public Good Provision in the United Nations Youth Associations Network

“…To capture the effect of the status-quo, participants in our experiment choose their actions against the backdrop of these pre-existing mitigation efforts. Previous experimental studies devoted to the global climate tragedy account for preexisting efforts by restricting the choice of players in a way that they can only add on top what has been already achieved (e.g., Milinski et al 2008;Tavoni et al 2011;Barrett and Dannenberg 2012;2014). By contrast, our experimental design allows both for increasing and decreasing ambition levels compared to the status-quo, most importantly players can undo existing efforts by taking pre-existing contributions from the public good.…”

Long-term scenarios: Energy pathways in the UK

“…However, while desirable, this is unlikely to be a realistic setup, especially in a post-Paris Agreement era characterised by voluntary NDC whose enforcement relies on soft 'naming and shaming'. In addition, the large inequalities in fossil fuel use (Figure 2) call for differentiated responsibilities, which is likely to exacerbate the risk of opportunistic behaviours inducing parties to delay mitigation action [5].…”

What Do We Learn from Public Good Games About Voluntary Climate Action? Evidence from an Artefactual Field Experiment

“…In the same spirit, some experimental studies on public good provision have been framed or interpreted with an explicit reference to mitigation decisions (e.g., Milinski et al, 2006Milinski et al, , 2008Tavoni et al, 2011;Brick and Visser, 2015). Such experiments present a theoretically appealing method for obtaining causal evidence at low cost.…”