Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/333537 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
Discussion Papers of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods No. 2025/13
Publisher: 
Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn
Abstract: 
Despite widespread concern about climate change, voluntary mitigation efforts often fail to maximize impact. In two online experiments (n = 1, 500), we elicit willingness to mitigate (WTM) by allowing subjects to delete actual CO2 allowances and examine how they allocate the WTM between their own and another's footprint. While 75% contribute a nonzero WTM, allocations are often inefficient, and many avoid freely available footprint information, suggesting limited efficiency concerns. Self-reported motives show that only half prioritize impact, while others cite fairness, personal responsibility, or intuition. Moreover, both WTM and efficiency are malleable by impact-unrelated nudges: a video emphasizing personal responsibility increases both, whereas social image based on the own footprint raises WTM but reduces efficiency. Our results suggest that voluntary climate action is shaped as much by psychological and social factors as by concern for impact.
Subjects: 
climate change
pro-environmental behavior
climate action
willingness to mitigate
impact
efficiency
consequentialism
warm glow
fairness
online experiment
JEL: 
C90
D01
D61
D62
D64
D83
D91
H41
Q51
Q54
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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