Climate Change in a Public Goods Game: Investment Decision in Mitigation versus Adaptation

The authors studied the potential trade-off between countries’ investments in mitigation versus adaptation to climate change. Mitigating greenhouse gases may be a public good, but adaptation to climate change is a private good, benefiting only the country or individual.

They used a one-shot public-goods game with a stochastic term to account for probabilistic destruction, mapping the probability density function to within-group levels of mitigation, and compared low- and high-vulnerability treatments by varying the magnitude of disaster. Results showed no significant difference in mitigation level and emphasized the role of trust in enhancing cooperation.

EfD Authors

Assoc. Professor Martine Visser Research fellow
Reviva Hasson Junior Research Fellow

Keywords

Climate Change

Centers

south africa

Type of publication

Peer reviewed

Reference

Hasson, Reviva, Åsa Löfgren, and Martine Visser (forthcoming), "Climate Change in a Public Goods Game: Investment Decision in Mitigation versus Adaptation", Ecological Economics.

Environment for Development

Environment for Development