The Cost of Climate Action: Experimental Evidence on the Impact of Climate Information on Charitable Donations to Climate Activism

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Wetherell, Samantha Gonsalves, Josephson, Anna
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Wetherell, Samantha Gonsalves
Josephson, Anna
author_facet Wetherell, Samantha Gonsalves
Josephson, Anna
contents We examine the propensity of individuals to donate to climate activism, evaluating the impact of different informational treatments on an incentive compatible charitable donation and stated climate change-related concerns. Participants were evaluated on climate literacy and general climate attitudes before being randomly assigned to a treatment which provided either education or neutral language about climate change, either with or without images of protest. After the treatment, participants engaged in an incentive compatible dictator game. We find that participants gave more to climate activism than seen in previous dictator game and charitable giving experiments, in both average amount given and proportion of participants who gave their entire endowment. However, we determine that climate activism information negatively influenced the amount of money donated. We also found that protest imagery moderated this negative effect and had a positive significant effect of increasing participants' climate concern. Finally, we found that the climate concern was significantly positively correlated with donations, while being a male was significantly negatively associated with donation amounts.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_17378
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Cost of Climate Action: Experimental Evidence on the Impact of Climate Information on Charitable Donations to Climate Activism
Wetherell, Samantha Gonsalves
Josephson, Anna
General Economics
Economics
We examine the propensity of individuals to donate to climate activism, evaluating the impact of different informational treatments on an incentive compatible charitable donation and stated climate change-related concerns. Participants were evaluated on climate literacy and general climate attitudes before being randomly assigned to a treatment which provided either education or neutral language about climate change, either with or without images of protest. After the treatment, participants engaged in an incentive compatible dictator game. We find that participants gave more to climate activism than seen in previous dictator game and charitable giving experiments, in both average amount given and proportion of participants who gave their entire endowment. However, we determine that climate activism information negatively influenced the amount of money donated. We also found that protest imagery moderated this negative effect and had a positive significant effect of increasing participants' climate concern. Finally, we found that the climate concern was significantly positively correlated with donations, while being a male was significantly negatively associated with donation amounts.
title The Cost of Climate Action: Experimental Evidence on the Impact of Climate Information on Charitable Donations to Climate Activism
topic General Economics
Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.17378