 Challenges for sustainability: misperceptions and misleading adviceErling Moxnes System Dynamics Review, 2023, vol. 39, issue 3, 185-206 Abstract: To ensure sustainable development, governments depend on informed decision‐makers including the electorates. Previous studies show evidence of widespread and systematic misperceptions, voter ignorance, and reliance on inappropriate cognitive heuristics. The wait and see heuristic is one such trusted heuristic that is used repeatedly and with minimal effort. When applied to the management of dynamically complex renewable resources, it leads to overinvestment and resource depletion. On the optimistic side, a laboratory experiment finds that proactive expert advice counteracts the wait and see heuristic and contributes to sustainability. However, when expert advice is challenged by misleading advice that supports the wait and see heuristic, most of the positive effect of the expert advice disappears. The experiment generalizes to a large number of sustainability problems. Different from fake news that can be corrected by simple facts, misperceptions and misleading advice call for extraordinary information policies and deliberative democracy. © 2023 The Authors. System Dynamics Review published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of System Dynamics Society. Date: 2023 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:sysdyn:v:39:y:2023:i:3:p:185-206 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article More articles in System Dynamics Review from System Dynamics Society |
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