Does Voting Solve Intergenerational Sustainability Dilemma?

Shun Katsuki and Yoichi Hizen
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Shun Katsuki: School of Economics and Management, Kochi University of Technology

No SDES-2020-7, Working Papers from Kochi University of Technology, School of Economics and Management

Abstract: Does voting solve intergenerational sustainability dilemma? Do voting rules matter for inducing people to collectively select a sustainable alternative that leaves more resources for future generations? To answer these questions, we conduct a laboratory experiment with human subjects in the framework of intergenerational sustainability dilemma game, in which the own-payoff maximizing choice by the current generation decreases the size of resource left for the subsequent generations. The choice is made by voting among the members of each generation, and we compare three voting rules, ordinary voting, whereby each person has one vote, proxy voting, whereby a part of people are given an extra vote on behalf of the subsequent generations, and two-ballot voting, whereby all people are given an extra vote. We observe that proxy voting and two-ballot voting improve the frequency of sustainable choice in comparison with ordinary voting, but the frequency is still low. This result implies that having people vote individually hardly achieves sustainable choices by successive generations even if the rules of voting are elaborated to some extent.

Keywords: proxy vote; intergenerational sustainability dilemma; future generation; laboratory experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2020-07, Revised 2020-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm, nep-env, nep-exp and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published in SDE Series, July 2020, pages 1-15

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http://www.souken.kochi-tech.ac.jp/seido/wp/SDES-2020-7.pdf First version, 2020 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does Voting Solve the Intergenerational Sustainability Dilemma? (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kch:wpaper:sdes-2020-7

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