Disaggregating the motivational microstructure of individual willingness-to-pay for climate change abatement

该项目将揭示气候保护支付意愿的微观结构。考虑到气候政策的宏伟目标和实现这些目标所需的巨额资金，公民是否愿意承担如此大规模的成本是一个关键的政策问题。然而，科学还远远不能提供一个可靠的模型来预测人们将如何响应旨在利用他们为诸如气候变化减缓等公共产品付费的意愿的不同政策工具。有证据表明，人们为气候保护做出贡献有几种不同的动机，每一种动机都会产生某种积极的意愿。然而，当政策针对特定动机时，对这些不同wtp的个人内部聚合过程和个人内部权衡知之甚少。因此，旨在利用这一WTP的政策可能远远达不到其潜力。在这个项目中，将进行一系列大规模的自然现场实验，并将结果与实验室实验的证据相结合，以理清和量化为气候保护做出贡献的不同动机的强度。由于创新的实验设计，现场实验不仅可以以非常大的样本进行，而且可以以较低的成本为德国人群提供具有代表性的样本。此外，取消欧盟排放限额将为促进在减少温室气体排放的实验中做出激励相容和可信的贡献提供一种新的方式。在先前研究的指导下，该项目将重点放在五组动机上：利他主义、“给予的温暖光芒”、道德劝说、形象动机和公平关切。

This project will shed light on the microstructure of willingness-to-pay for climate protection. Given the very ambitious goals in climate policy and the large sums needed to achieve them, the willingness of citizens to bear costs of this scale is a key policy question. However, science is still far from being able to provide a reliable model to predict how people will respond to different policy instruments aimed at harnessing their willingness-to-pay for a public good such as climate change abatement. There is evidence that people have several distinct motives for contributing to climate protection, each giving rise to some positive willingness. However, very little is known about the process of intra-personal aggregation of these distinct WTPs and intra-personal trade-offs when policies target specific motivations. As a result, policies aimed at harnessing this WTP may significantly fall short of its potential.In this project, a set of large-scale natural field experiments will be carried out and the results combined with evidence from laboratory experiments in order to disentangle and quantify the strength of different motives for contributions to climate protection. Due to the innovative experimental design, field experiments can be run not only with very large but also representative samples for the German population at low cost. Moreover, retiring EU Emission Allowances will provide a novel way for facilitating both incentive-compatible and credible contributions in experiments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Guided by prior research, the project focuses on five sets of motives: altruism, a ‘warm glow of giving’, moral suasions, image motivation, and equity concerns.