Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/257460 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Citation: 
[Journal:] Games [ISSN:] 2073-4336 [Volume:] 11 [Issue:] 4 [Article No.:] 42 [Publisher:] MDPI [Place:] Basel [Year:] 2020 [Pages:] 1-20
Publisher: 
MDPI, Basel
Abstract: 
To avoid the dangerous consequences of climate change, humans need to overcome two intertwined conflicts. First, they must deal with an intra-generational conflict that emerges from the allocation of costs of climate change mitigation among different actors of the current generation. Second, they face an inter-generational conflict that stems from the higher costs for long-term mitigation measures, particularly helping future generations, compared to the short-term actions aimed at adapting to the immediate effects of climate change, benefiting mostly the current generation. We devise a novel game to study this multi-level conflict and investigate individuals' behavior in a lab experiment. We find that, although individuals reach sufficient cooperation levels to avoid adverse consequences for their own generation, they contribute more to cheaper short-term than to costlier long-term measures, to the detriment of future generations. Simple "nudge" interventions, however, may alter this pattern considerably. We find that changing the default contribution level to the inter-generational welfare optimum increases long-term contributions. Moreover, providing individuals with the possibility to commit themselves to inter-generational solidarity leads to an even stronger increase in long-term contributions. Nevertheless, the results also suggest that nudges alone may not be enough to induce inter-generationally optimal contributions.
Subjects: 
climate change
experiment
inter-generational
nudging
social dilemma
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
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Document Type: 
Article
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