Social influence and carbon dioxide mitigation
通过两轮大规模在线实验，发现当参与者知道自己的减排选择会被他人观察时，其减排意愿提高约17%，但增加观察人数并不增强效果，且多数人高估了自己的影响力。
We investigate the potential of social influence to increase people’s willingness to mitigate their carbon impact. In a large-scale online experiment consisting of two waves of data collection participants are given the choice to spend any share of a 10 GBP endowment on mitigation. If a wave-1 participant is told that their (anonymized) choice will be observed by a wave-2 participant before that participant makes their choice, then the wave-1 participant’s willingness to mitigate (WTM) increases by about 17 % . This is not the case if their choice is observed by the wave-2 participant after that participant has already made their choice, which demonstrates that it is indeed the possibility of influence and not only observability that matters. Increasing influence at the extensive margin, i.e. increasing the number of wave-2 participants observing the choice, does not increase WTM. We also elicit beliefs and find that most participants overestimate how much influence they have. • Having social influence increases people’s willingness to mitigate their carbon impact. • However it is difficult to scale up these effects. • People tend to overestimate how much influence they have.