Transboundary pollution control under evolving social norms: a mean-field approach

Davide Torre (), Rosario Maggistro () and Simone Marsiglio ()
Additional contact information
Davide Torre: SKEMA Business School and Universite Cote d’Azur, Sophia Antipolis
Rosario Maggistro: University of Trieste
Simone Marsiglio: University of Pisa

Decisions in Economics and Finance, 2025, vol. 48, issue 1, No 21, 437-463

Abstract: Abstract We analyze a dynamic game of transboundary pollution control under endogenously evolving social norms over a finite time horizon. Each player chooses their emission level in order to minimize the social cost of mitigation, which partly depends on the lack of conformity to the social norm establishing the pollution standards at the local level. We show that social norms per se are unable to favor pollution reductions, but if combined with some public reclamation effort, they become very effective in improving environmental outcomes. Indeed, provided that some minimal public reclamation takes place, social norms promote a reduction in the average of the expected value of the local pollution stocks across locations, both in the case in which players rely on an open loop and a closed loop strategy. Moreover, by explicitly characterizing the equilibrium outcome, we formally confirm the reliability of the mean-field approximation of the finite-population dynamics, despite such an approximation introduces some distortion regarding the difference between open and closed loop strategies. We also show that our results are robust to the introduction of individual abatement efforts and heterogeneity across players.

Keywords: Mean-field game; N-player game; Transboundary pollution; Social norms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C70 Q50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10203-024-00459-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:decfin:v:48:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s10203-024-00459-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ry/journal/10203/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10203-024-00459-9

Access Statistics for this article

Decisions in Economics and Finance is currently edited by Paolo Ghirardato

More articles in Decisions in Economics and Finance from Springer, Associazione per la Matematica
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().