Research

Social image effects are a common phenomenon, yet strongly heterogeneous across situations and people. We use a lab-in-the-field experiment in small-scale societies of Papua New Guinea to study the drivers of heterogeneity in social image effects, focusing on the roles of social norms and social network relationships. Participants played a dictator game, both, in private and in front of an observer. This data is accompanied by incentive-compatibly measured information on the social norm location and detailed social network data. First, we present causal evidence that social norms serve as reference points for social image effects, with participants' behavior shifting toward the norm when observed. Second, our analysis reveals that the strength of norm enforcement depends on the participant-observer relationship. We find that norm enforcement is stronger when i) social distance increases, ii) cooperative ties weaken, and iii) observer centrality in communication networks decreases.

Community support for climate change adaptation projects markedly benefits effective protection. A relevant driver of community support is the perceived attribution of responsibility to individuals. If individuals attribute responsibility for adaptation to others, e.g. public authorities, this reduces the adaptation efforts of the individual, might induce preference uncertainty, and can lead to maladaptation. We study individuals' perceptions of personal responsibility and preferences for coastal protection in a setting in which individuals have little formal responsibility. To do so, we collect data from the Maldives, a small island development state with significant risks of seaborne hazards where responsibility for coastal protection formally rests with the central government without significant involvement of local communities. Using survey measures and a Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE), we investigate respondents' sense of personal responsibility and their preferences for climate change adaptation distinguishing between preferences for hard, man-made structures and soft, working-with-nature protection approaches. The results show that responsibility perception plays an important role for stated willingness to support protective measures. However, they further show a mismatch between formally assigned and perceived responsibility for protection with a majority of respondents having a strong sense of personal responsibility for protection. In addition, the DCE results indicate a misalignment of people's preferences and the measures implemented by the government. While the latter belong to the group of hard protection measures, the majority of respondents show a clear preference for soft protection. We discuss the implications of these findings and highlight the importance of a better understanding of drivers of responsibility perceptions.

Under uncertainty about the kind, extent, or time frames of coastal threats, efficient protection requires measures that are effective in the short term and flexible enough to assure protection even if conditions change in the long term. Existing protection options are unable to offer both attributes simultaneously, creating a trade-off between short-term and long-term effectiveness in protection choice. This paper investigates the role played by differences in the temporal effectiveness of coastal protection measures in the choice of protection modes. Results from a discrete-choice experiment implemented in Papua New Guinea suggest that respondents have a strong preference for long-term over short-term effectiveness; an urgency to protect cannot be identified. Using incentivized preference measures for patience and risk-aversion as well as sociodemographic controls, we account for taste heterogeneity and validate the robustness of our results.

Social norms have proven to be key determinants of decisions when individuals decide on their own. Yet, many important decisions are made by collectives such as teams, management boards, and electorates, where multiple individuals may affect the final decision. In such settings, each individual's choice matters less. Whether this influences the effect of social norms is not clear ex ante, as competing theories lead to different predictions. We address this gap by conducting an experiment to test whether the role of social norms differs between collective and individual settings. In an allocation task, we find that people tend to be less prosocial in collectives than in the individual setting. This is not due to a change in the social norms that describe what one ought to do; rather, decision-makers in collectives are less concerned about doing what is appropriate. We then examine the extent to which one can influence the role of social norms by means of two social norm interventions: a nudge that strengthens social norms and the introduction of external norm enforcement. We find that both interventions are more effective at increasing prosociality in collectives, and we discuss the implications for organizational and institutional design.

Economic preference are strongly heterogeneous across the globe. This paper adds to the study of the causes of this variation, using a novel and unique setting allowing to disentangle the roles of culture and climate on preference formation. In particular, we use data from the southern slope of Mount Kilimanjaro which exhibits a steep continuous gradient of ecological variation vis a vis minimal socio-political heterogeneity across space and time. Matching data on economic preferences from 14 villages with data on climatic conditions between 1982 - 2011, we are able to identify long-term effects of environmental conditions on economic preferences. Using this data from a continuous climate gradient, we corroborate previous findings from the literature regarding patience and risk tolerance: Patience is significantly higher in regions in which the climatic baseline conditions are suitable for agricultural activity and a higher exposure to climatic shocks in the climatic baseline fosters risk tolerance. Notably, our finding for risk tolerance does not extent to comparably milder climatic uncertainty in terms of precipitation and temperature variability. Instead, we find negative effects of mild environmental uncertainty on risk tolerance. Finally, we find no robust clear cut role of climatic baseline conditions on prosociality variables in our dataset.  

Climate change largely unfolds by two types of events - extreme events and gradual longterm changes - which differ markedly in occurrence probability and (marginal) impact. This paper shows evidence that these differences in characteristics induce two structurally different cognitive routes underlying people’s protection motivation. Using field data on the willingness to protect against coastal hazards in a sample simultaneously exposed to sea level rise and coastal flooding, variation in cognitive processing of events is identified at the level of event awareness, expectation formation and adaptation motivation. The results call for more nuanced research and bear direct policy relevance. In case of long-term gradual events, the data suggests that a correction of event misperceptions can increase motivations to protect, in case of extreme events, the stimulation of protection motivation requires an increase in future expectation levels.