Is fairness blind?—The effect of framing on preferences for effort-sharing rules

Abstract

By using a choice experiment, this paper focuses on citizens' preferences for effort-sharing rules of how carbon abatement should be shared among countries. We find that Swedes do not rank the rule favoring their own country highest. Instead, they prefer the rule where all countries are allowed to emit an equal amount per person, a rule that favors Africa at the expense of high emitters such as the U.S. The least preferred rule is reduction proportional to historical emissions. Using two different treatments, one where the respondents were informed about the country names and one where the country names were replaced with anonymous labels A-D, we also test whether people's preferences for effort-sharing rules depend on the framing of the problem. We find that while the ranking of the principles is the same in both treatments, the strength of the preferences is significantly increased when the actual names of the countries are used.

On self-interested preferences for burden sharing rules: An econometric analysis for the costs of energy policy measures

“…A second direction of empirical and experimental studies is based on (more or less representative) data at the citizen level. While Schleich et al (2016) clearly confirm a strong support of the polluter-pays rule, the results in Carlsson et al (2011Carlsson et al ( , 2013, Bechtel and Scheve (2013), Gampfer (2014), Brick and Visser (2015), and Ščasný et al (2017) are less clear-cut. A key result of some empirical analyses that include respondents from different countries is that perceptions about distributive justice can be influenced by economic self-interest (see also e.g.…”

“…Lange et al, 2007, Carlsson et al, 2013, Kesternich et al, 2014, Brick and Visser, 2015. In contrast, Carlsson et al (2011) and Schleich et al (2016) do not find selfinterested preferences for burden sharing rules.…”

Negotiating Weights for Burden Sharing Rules Among Heterogeneous Parties: Empirical Evidence from a Survey Among Delegates in International Climate Negotiations

“…While stated preferences for negotiators from EU, Russia and the USA are fully consistent with self-interest, individuals from G77/China support the ability-to-pay and polluter-pays rule and therefore their position deviates from the prediction (egalitarian rule). Carlsson et al 2011 extend the empirical research of a fairness bias on a group level by elicitating preferences for burden sharing rules among 400 Swedish citizens in a choice experiment. The choice attributes were given by a certain burden sharing rule (polluter-pays based on historical or current emissions, egalitarian rule) with the respective mitigation requirements for USA, EU, China and associated with the respective yearly cost for the own household until 2050.…”

International Climate Finance and Its Influence on Fairness and Policy

“…Lange et al (2010) argue that although equity arguments may be perceived as being used out of fairness considerations, equity principles in international climate negotiations are mostly correlated with the self‐interest of the negotiating parties. However, a recent study by Carlsson et al (2011) on ingroup bias, that is, on whether preferences for effort‐sharing rules for reducing carbon dioxide emissions are based only on the rules per se or whether they are confounded with personal preferences for individual countries, finds that ingroup bias is less of a problem.…”