Neue Pub­lika­tion im Journ­al of En­vir­on­ment­al Eco­nom­ics and Man­age­ment

 |  NachhaltigkeitPaderborn Research Center for Sustainable Economy (PARSEC)

Die Studie "Collective minimum contributions to counteract the ratchet effect in the voluntary provision of public goods” ist zur Veröffentlichung im Journal of Environmental Economics and Management  angenommen worden.

Abstract:

We experimentally test a theoretically promising amendment to the ratchet-up mechanism of the Paris Agreement. The ratchet-up mechanism prescribes that parties’ commitments to the global response to climate change cannot decrease over time, and our results show that its effect is detrimental. We design a public goods game to study whether cooperation is promoted by an amendment to the mechanism that stipulates that all agents must contribute at least a collectively chosen minimum based on the principle of the lowest common denominator. We find that binding collective minimum contributions improve the effectiveness of the ratchet-up mechanism. Non-binding minimum contributions, by contrast, do not encourage cooperation. Our data indicate that the difference is attributable to conditional cooperative dynamics. If other participants contribute less than the collective minimum contribution, even initially cooperative participants start to negatively reciprocate this form of non-compliance by contributing less.

Citation:

Alt, Marius, Carlo Gallier, Martin Kesternich, Bodo Sturm (forthcoming), Collective minimum contributions to counteract the ratchet effect in the voluntary provision of public goods, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management

Pre-print:

tinyurl.com/bdhepp85