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

理解环境变化和人类与这种变化有关的行为对自然科学和社会科学都提出了重大挑战。一个主要的挑战是理解限制认识和防止环境退化的认知偏差。历史表明，在没有经历直接负面后果的情况下，人类往往会等待灾难发生，然后才采取措施适应迫在眉睫的威胁。在这方面，海平面变化是一个通常被视为遥远而相当温和的问题的典型例子。实验经济学的研究已经发现了一些认知偏差，这些偏差会影响个人，使他们的判断和决定系统性地偏离理性或合理的评估和选择。然而，人们对影响适应海平面变化行为的偏差、这种偏差的后果以及如何避免这些偏差知之甚少。在这里，我们提出了一个综合实验经济学和模型项目，以了解和量化主要认知偏差在防止认识和适应海平面变化方面的相对贡献。我们将把注意力集中在被认为与环境变化最相关的六大偏见上。它们是：(1)积极错觉偏差，(2)认知失调，(3)基本归因偏差，(4)风险认知偏差，(5)群体内偏差，(6)呈现偏差。我们将采取比较办法，针对两个截然不同的岛群：瓦卡托比群岛(印度尼西亚苏门答腊岛)和北弗里西亚群岛(德国石勒苏益格-荷尔斯泰因)与海平面上升有关的偏见。这两组岛屿在大小上大致相似，都以旅游业为重要重点，但在文化、政治和社会生态方面截然不同。用探索性的方法，我们将首先评估和比较这两个地区的文化和社会经济背景。这将使我们在接下来的步骤中，量化各种偏见与调查和行为经济学实验的相对相关性。此外，通过基于代理的建模调查，我们将把通过调查和经济实验获得的相关信息整合到更广泛和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假设及其在多种海平面变化情景下的影响。行为偏差对人们对环境变化的偏好、感知和反应产生了强大的影响。通过确定这些偏见的变化及其相对相关性，我们的项目将阐明信息处理和适应行为的后果，以便能够制定适当的政治、经济和社会政策，以减轻并可能预防环境灾害。

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.