Moral Hazards and Geoengineering: Evidence from a Large Scale Online Experiment
Geoengineering News
Authors
Abstract
Geoengineering (especially solar radiation management) may help to reduce the negative outcomes of climate change by minimising or reversing global warming. However, many express the worry that
geoengineering may pose a moral hazard, i.e., that information about geoengineering may lead to a reduction in climate change mitigation efforts. In this paper, we report a large-scale pre-registered, moneyincentivised, online experiment with a representative US sample (N=2500). We compare actual behaviour (donations to climate
change charities and clicks on climate change petition links) as well as stated preferences (support for a carbon tax and self-reported intentions to reduce emissions) between participants who receive information about geoengineering with two control groups (a salience control that shows information about climate change generally and a content control that shows information about a
different topic). Behavioural choices are made with an earned endowment, and stated preference responses are incentivised via the Bayesian Truth Serum. We fail to find a significant impact of receiving information about geoengineering, and based on equivalence tests, we provide evidence in favour of the absence of such an effect. We take this to provide evidence for the claim that there is no moral hazard in this context.
Subjects
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Keywords
Moral Hazard, geoengineering, climate intervention