Destructive Behaviour, Judgement and Economic Decision-making under Thermal Stress

Ingvild Almås, Maximilian Auffhammer, Tessa Bold, Ian Bolliger, Aluma Dembo, Solomon M Hsiang, Shuhei Kitamura, Edward Miguel and Robert Pickmans

Department of Economics, Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley

Abstract: Abstract Accumulating evidence indicates that environmental temperature substantially affects economic outcomes and violence, but the reasons for this linkage are only partially understood. We study whether temperature directly influences behaviour by evaluating the effect of thermal stress on multiple dimensions of economic decision-making, judgement and destructive behaviour with 2,000 participants in Kenya and the United States who were randomly assigned to different temperatures in a laboratory. The main finding is that most major dimensions of economic decision-making are unaffected by temperature. We also find that heat significantly increases willingness to voluntarily destroy other participants’ assets in the Kenyan sample.

Keywords: 38 Economics (for-2020); 3801 Applied Economics (for-2020); Behavioral and Social Science (rcdc); Basic Behavioral and Social Science (rcdc); 14 Economics (for); Economics (science-metrix); 3801 Applied economics (for-2020); 3802 Econometrics (for-2020); 3803 Economic theory (for-2020) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-06-25
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Destructive Behavior, Judgment, and Economic Decision-Making Under Thermal Stress (2019)
Working Paper: Destructive Behavior, Judgment, and Economic Decision-making under Thermal Stress (2019)
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