Can behavioral insights contribute to better climate policy? How do behavioral motives and biases interact with market institutions? And what are the consequences of market-based solutions in unequal societies? To discuss and explore these questions, the briq Climate Workshop brought together researchers from psychology, behavioral economics, environmental economics, theoretical microeconomics, climate finance, and macroeconomics.
Below is a brief summary of the topics covered (see the workshop program for a full list of presentations).
Experience of extreme weather events: Eric Johnson presented a meta study showing that current or recent weather experiences can influence concerns about global warming. Elke Weber‘s work showed that witnessing extreme weather events can even reduce the political partisan gap in climate attitudes. David Huffman explored the effects of weather on economic and social preferences, and Johannes Stroebel explained how the local reaction of investors to local weather events can be used to derive a climate risk hedge portfolio.
Preferences: Frikk Nesje argued that the weight a social planner places on future welfare increases if people’s preference to benefit future generations is generalized above their descendants, an idea he refers to as “cross-dynastic intergenerational altruism”. Klaus Schmidt explained under which circumstances carbon emission trading interferes with the private motivation of households, firms, or states.
Attention: Anna Schulze Tilling explored how food labels facilitate climate-conscious food choices, in particular through an attention mechanism. Matthias Rodemeier discussed how attention to information about energy efficiency can mute price sensitivity and thus interfere with the incentive effect of subsidies.
Other topics included the behavioral principles of cooperation (Simon Gächter), peer effects (Sebastian Tebbe), the unequal effects of carbon taxation (Diego Känzig), the consequences of wealth inequality for the optimal taxation of externalities (Philipp Strack), and people’s misperception of their marginal impact on global warming (Christoph Semken). briq researcher Peter Andre presented global evidence on people’s willingness to act against climate change—brand new results from a novel briq research project.