Co-benefits motivate individual donations to mitigate climate change

Christoph Feldhaus, Marvin Gleue, Andreas Löschel and Peter Werner

No 4, Research Memorandum from Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE)

Abstract: We study the role of co-benefits – positive effects of climate protection projects in addition to CO2 reduction – for the motivation to contribute to climate change mitigation. In two artefactual field experiments conducted with large population samples from Germany (n = 2,400 in total), we test if and how the existence and specific nature of co-benefits affect donations. In both experiments, we find that co-benefits have a positive impact on contributions to climate protection. Our second experiment shows that contributions also respond to the nature of co-benefits, and these responses seem to be driven by individual donor preferences for the respective type of co-benefit. Moreover, we observe that making carbon footprints and thus individual responsibility for environmental externalities more salient increases donations irrespective of the existence and nature of co-benefits. Finally, when uncertainty about co-benefits is introduced, the majority of potential donors requests information in both experiments, and those who choose to be informed about co-benefits provide higher donations relative to subjects who choose not to be informed.

JEL-codes: D64 H41 L31 Q51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-04-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-ene, nep-env and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cris.maastrichtuniversity.nl/ws/files/90136289/RM22004.pdf (application/pdf)

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:unm:umagsb:2022004

DOI: 10.26481/umagsb.2022004

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Research Memorandum from Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Andrea Willems () and Leonne Portz ().