Misperceived social norms and willingness to act against climate change

  • We document the individual willingness to act against climate change and study the role of social norms in a large sample of US adults. Individual beliefs about social norms positively predict pro-climate donations, comparable in strength to universal moral values and economic preferences such as patience and reciprocity. However, we document systematic misperceptions of social norms. Respondents vastly underestimate the prevalence of climate-friendly behaviors and norms. Correcting these misperceptions in an experiment causally raises individual willingness to act against climate change as well as individual support for climate policies. The effects are strongest for individuals who are skeptical about the existence and threat of global warming.

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Author:Peter AndreORCiDGND, Teodora BonevaGND, Felix ChopraORCiDGND, Armin FalkORCiDGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-715582
URL:https://ssrn.com/abstract=4740469
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4740469
Series (Serial Number):SAFE working paper (414)
Publisher:SAFE
Place of publication:Frankfurt am Main
Document Type:Working Paper
Language:English
Year of Completion:2024
Year of first Publication:2024
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2024/03/06
Tag:Climate change; beliefs; climate behavior; climate policies; economic preferences; misperception; moral values; social norms; survey experiments
Edition:February 26, 2024
Page Number:89
Note:
Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy – EXC 2126/1– 390838866. Funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) through CRC TR 224 (Project A01, B03) is gratefully acknowledged. The activities of the Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI) are financed by the Danish National Research Foundation, Grant NRF134. The study obtained ethics approval from the German Association for Experimental Economic Research (#Xx5i4FQa, 02/09/2021).
HeBIS-PPN:516889117
Institutes:Wirtschaftswissenschaften / Wirtschaftswissenschaften
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / House of Finance (HoF)
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / Center for Financial Studies (CFS)
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe (SAFE)
Dewey Decimal Classification:3 Sozialwissenschaften / 33 Wirtschaft / 330 Wirtschaft
JEL-Classification:D Microeconomics / D6 Welfare Economics / D64 Altruism
D Microeconomics / D8 Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty / D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief
D Microeconomics / D9 Intertemporal Choice and Growth / D91 Intertemporal Consumer Choice; Life Cycle Models and Saving
Q Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics / Q5 Environmental Economics / Q51 Valuation of Environmental Effects
Q Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics / Q5 Environmental Economics / Q54 Climate; Natural Disasters; Global Warming
Z Other Special Topics / Z1 Cultural Economics; Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology / Z13 Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoDeutsches Urheberrecht