Prof. Dr. Martin Kesternich

From an economic perspective, the protection of natural resources such as the environment and the climate is a common good. This means that the cooperation required for this is associated with considerable incentive problems: As a rule, the rational behavior of individuals does not lead to the socially optimal level of environmental or climate protection. The transformation to a low greenhouse gas economy therefore requires major joint efforts, whether for the development of new technologies and solutions or to steer established behavior patterns along new paths in the long term.

With our research on cooperation problems, we contribute to the development of good rules and institutions for the efficient management of common goods in climate protection, especially taking into account behavioral economic methods and insights. Two topics are currently in the foreground: the analysis of joint and coordinated action in international climate policy and the investigation of the cooperative behavior of actors at the downstream levels, primarily with a view to consumers.

Suitable instruments for the formation and establishment of cooperative solutions must not only fulfill the main economic criterion of cost efficiency, but are also confronted with a large number of other requirements. These include, for example, the equitable distribution of burdens in transformation processes - both internationally and within an economy.

At the same time, our research serves to improve our understanding of how people make decisions and how these influence the effectiveness of climate and energy policy regulation. To this end, we take advantage of the opportunity to study human decision-making behavior, for example, in laboratory or field experiments.