Sea level change and the Tragedy of Cognition.A comparative study on the role of cognitive biases in understanding sea level rise (SEATRAC).

了解环境变化以及人类与这种变化相关的行为对自然科学和社会科学都构成了重要挑战。一个主要挑战是了解限制认识和防止环境退化的认知偏见。历史表明，在没有直接负面后果的情况下，人类往往等到灾难发生后才采取措施适应迫在眉睫的威胁。在这方面，海平面变化是一个典型的例子，说明一个经常被认为是遥远和相当温和的问题。实验经济学的研究已经确定了一些认知偏见，这些偏见通过使个人的判断和决定系统地偏离理性或合理的评估和选择来影响个人。然而，人们对影响海平面变化适应行为的偏见、这种偏见的后果以及如何避免这些偏见知之甚少。在这里，我们提出了一个综合的实验经济学和建模项目，以了解和量化的相对贡献的主要认知偏差，防止承认和适应海平面变化。我们将把注意力集中在六个主要的偏见，这是公认的最相关的环境变化。这些是：（1）积极错觉偏差，（2）认知失调，（3）基本归因偏差，（4）风险感知偏差，（5）群体内偏差，（6）现在偏差。我们将采用比较的方法，针对两个截然不同的岛屿群：瓦卡托比群岛（苏门答腊，印度尼西亚）和北弗里斯兰群岛（石勒苏益格-荷尔斯泰因，德国）的海平面上升的偏见。这两组岛屿的面积大致相似，都以旅游业为重点，但在文化、政治和社会生态上有很大的不同。通过探索性的方法，我们将首先评估和比较两个地区的文化和社会经济背景。这将使我们能够在接下来的步骤中，通过调查和行为经济学实验来量化各种偏见的相对相关性。此外，通过基于代理的建模调查，我们将把调查和经济实验获得的相关信息整合到更广泛、更灵活的模拟环境中。数值实验将使我们能够探索一些偏差分布的假设和它们的影响，在多个海平面变化的情况下。行为偏见对人们的偏好、看法和对环境变化的反应有着强大的影响。通过确定这些偏差的变化及其相对相关性，我们的项目将揭示信息处理和适应行为的后果，以便制定适当的政治，经济和社会政策，以减轻和可能预防环境灾害。

Understanding environmental change and the behaviour of humans in relation to this change poses important challenges for both natural and social sciences. A major challenge is to understand the cognitive biases that limit the recognition and prevention of environmental degradation. History suggests that without experiencing direct negative consequences, humans often wait for disasters to occur before undertaking measures for adapting to the looming threats. Sea level change is, in this respect, a classical example of a problem often perceived as distant and quite moderate. Research in experimental economics has identified a number of cognitive biases that affect individuals by making their judgments and decisions deviating systematically from what would be rational or reasonable assessments and choices. Yet, very little is known about the biases that influence adaptive behaviour to sea level change, the consequences of such biases, and what can be done to avoid them. Here we propose an integrated experimental economics and modelling project to understand and quantify the relative contribution of main cognitive biases in preventing recognition of and adaptation to sea level change. We will focus our attention on six major biases, which are recognised as the most relevant for environmental change. These are: (1) positive illusion bias, (2) cognitive dissonance, (3) fundamental attribution bias, (4) risk perception bias, (5) in-group bias, and (6) present bias. We will adopt a comparative approach by targeting biases related to sea level rise in two contrasting island groups: Wakatobi Islands (Sumatra, Indonesia) and North Frisian Islands (Schleswig-Holstein, Germany). These two groups of islands are approximately similar in size, both have an important focus on the tourism industry, but are culturally, politically and social-ecologically very different. With an explorative approach, we will first assess and compare the cultural and socioeconomic contexts of the two regions. This will allow us, in a following step, to quantify the relative relevance of the various biases with surveys and behavioural economics experiments. In addition, with Agent-Based Modelling investigations, we will integrate the relevant information gained with surveys and economic experiments into a broader and more flexible simulative context. Numerical experiments will allow us to explore a number of bias distribution hypotheses and their effects in the context of multiple sea level change scenarios. Behavioural biases are a powerful influence on people’s preferences, perceptions and reactions to environmental change. By identifying the variation of these biases and their relative relevance, our project will shed light on the consequences of information processing and adaptation behaviour so that appropriate political, economic and social policies can be designed to mitigate and possibly prevent environmental disasters.