CfP: Workshop on "Anxiety and (policy) preferences in relation to climate change"

[Friedrichsen, Jana]

Dear all,

please find below a call for papers for a workshop we are organizing at Kiel University for July 3-4, 2025. We are happy to receive your submissions by March 15, 2025. We particularly welcome submissions also from other disciplines but economics that have something to say on the workshop's questions.

All the best

Jana

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Workshop: Anxiety and (policy) preferences in relation to climate change

July 3-4, 2025, at Kiel University, Germany

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. Effective policy responses, identified through interdisciplinary assessment, need public support. While recent studies on policy preference are highly insightful, they typically do not assess affective responses and emotional states of respondents. Specifically, the role of anxiety, regarding the climate or economic conditions, for policy preferences is not well understood, despite increasing attention to these emotions in research and the media. This workshop is intended to provide a starting point for integrating anxiety into the analysis of climate policies.

In this workshop, we aim at bringing together perspectives from both economics and other social sciences to investigate the role of anxiety in the challenge of implementing effective policies, be they targeted at mitigation or adaption, and societal change in response to climate change. The broader theme underlying our workshop is the desire to better understand what are important determinants of (climate) anxiety as an emotional state and its influence on individual preferences and decision making. This theme comprises (at least) three types of questions and the role of heterogeneity is of particular interest in each of them:

1) Does anxiety influence preferences, e.g. regarding risk and time, or altruism?
2) Do feelings of anxiety influence preferences about policy measures?
3) Can politics or public reporting influence the feeling of anxiety or moderate its effect on policy preferences and decision making?

Submissions:

We are inviting submissions of both empirical and theoretical work that fit into the workshop theme. We aim to have intensive discussions and welcome original contributions at an early stage as well as submissions by junior researchers. Submissions in the form of an extended abstract (of maximum 2 pages) or a full paper should be sent to friedr...@economics.uni-kiel.de by March 15, 2025. Decisions of acceptance or rejection will be sent out no later than April 1, 2025.

There is no participation fee. We have limited funding for travel expenses and accommodation that can be applied for by participants who have no other funding.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any question.

Organizers: 

Jana Friedrichsen, Ulrike Kornek and Katrin Rehdanz, Kiel University

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Prof. Dr. Jana Friedrichsen
Kiel University
Institute of Economics
D-24098 Kiel

Visiting address:
Wilhelm-Seelig-Platz 1, R.402

Telefon: +49 431 880 3609
Email: friedr...@economics.uni-kiel.de