Perspective-taking with affected others to promote climate change mitigation.

Prior evidence suggests that perspective-taking may promote pro-environmental behavior, at least for low-cost behaviors or local environmental problems. Climate change, however, requires costly mitigation efforts and is a global problem. Thus, in this study, we examine whether perspective-taking in the context of climate change is effective in promoting mitigation behaviors, including actual and/or costly behaviors, the mechanisms through which perspective-taking works, and if the distance to the person adversely affected by climate change matters for the effect. We conducted an online experiment with a non-student sample from Germany (n = 557), utilizing a 2 × 2 factorial design, to investigate the impact of perspective-taking and distance on three outcome measures: a climate donation, signing a petition, and approval of mitigation policies. We find that perspective-taking does not promote these mitigation behaviors, yet it raises the degree perspective-takers value and - for close others - feel connected with the affected person. Exploratory analysis shows that dispositional perspective-taking and empathic concern are correlated with mitigation behaviors.

Diverse values of nature for sustainability.

Twenty-five years since foundational publications on valuing ecosystem services for human well-being1,2, addressing the global biodiversity crisis3 still implies confronting barriers to incorporating nature's diverse values into decision-making. These barriers include powerful interests supported by current norms and legal rules such as property rights, which determine whose values and which values of nature are acted on. A better understanding of how and why nature is (under)valued is more urgent than ever4. Notwithstanding agreements to incorporate nature's values into actions, including the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF)5 and the UN Sustainable Development Goals6, predominant environmental and development policies still prioritize a subset of values, particularly those linked to markets, and ignore other ways people relate to and benefit from nature7. Arguably, a 'values crisis' underpins the intertwined crises of biodiversity loss and climate change8, pandemic emergence9 and socio-environmental injustices10. On the basis of more than 50,000 scientific publications, policy documents and Indigenous and local knowledge sources, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) assessed knowledge on nature's diverse values and valuation methods to gain insights into their role in policymaking and fuller integration into decisions7,11. Applying this evidence, combinations of values-centred approaches are proposed to improve valuation and address barriers to uptake, ultimately leveraging transformative changes towards more just (that is, fair treatment of people and nature, including inter- and intragenerational equity) and sustainable futures.

Payments for ecosystem services did not crowd out pro-environmental behavior: Long-term experimental evidence from Uganda.

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are increasingly being implemented worldwide as conservation instruments that provide conditional economic incentives to landowners for a prespecified duration. However, in the psychological and economic literature, critics have raised concerns that PES can undermine the recipient's intrinsic motivation to engage in pro-environmental behavior. Such "crowding out" may reduce the effectiveness of PES and may even worsen conservation outcomes once programs are terminated. In this study, we harnessed a randomized controlled trial that provided PES to land users in Western Uganda and evaluated whether these incentives had a persistent effect on pro-environmental behavior and its underlying behavioral drivers 6 y after the last payments were made. We elicited pro-environmental behavior with an incentivized, experimental measure that consisted of a choice for respondents between more and less environmentally friendly tree seedlings. In addition to this main outcome, survey-based measures for underlying behavioral drivers captured self-efficacy beliefs, intrinsic motivation, and perceived forest benefits. Overall, we found no indications that PES led to the crowding out of pro-environmental behavior. That is, respondents from the treatment villages were as likely as respondents from the control villages to choose environmentally friendly tree seedlings. We also found no systematic differences between these two groups in their underlying behavioral drivers, and nor did we find evidence for crowding effects when focusing on self-reported tree planting behavior as an alternative outcome measure.

Distance to climate change consequences reduces willingness to engage in low-cost mitigation actions-Results from an experimental online study from Germany.

Adverse consequences of climate change often affect people and places far away from those that have the greatest capacity for mitigation. Several correlational and some experimental studies suggest that the willingness to take mitigation actions may diminish with increasing distance. However, the empirical findings are ambiguous. In order to investigate if and how socio-spatial distance to climate change effects plays a role for the willingness to engage in mitigation actions, we conducted an online experiment with a German population sample (n = 383). We find that the willingness to sign a petition for climate protection was significantly reduced when a person in India with a name of Indian origin was affected by flooding, as compared to a person in Germany with a name of German origin. Distance did not affect donating money to climate protection or approving of mitigation policies. Our results provide evidence for the existence of a negative effect of distance to climate change consequences on the willingness to engage in low-cost mitigation actions. Investigating explanations for such an effect, we find that it can be attributed to the spatial rather than the social dimension of distance. Moreover, we find some cautious evidence that people with strong racist attitudes react differently to the distance manipulations, suggesting a form of environmental racism that could also reduce mitigation action in the case of climate change.

Fostering collective action through participation in natural resource and environmental management: An integrative and interpretative narrative review using the IAD, NAS and SES frameworks.

Solving humanity's social-environmental challenges calls for collective action by relevant actors. Hence, involving these actors in the policy process has been deemed both necessary and promising. But how and to what extent can participatory policy interventions (PIs) foster collective action for sustainable environmental and natural resource management? Lab and lab-in-the-field experiments on co-operation in the context of collective action challenges (i.e. social dilemmas) and case study research on participatory processes both offer insights into this question but have hitherto mainly remained unconnected. This article reviews insights from these two streams of literature in tandem, synthesising and analysing them using the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework in combination with the network of action situations (NAS) framework and the social-ecological systems (SES) framework. We thus perform an integrative and interpretative narrative review to draw a richer and more nuanced picture of PIs: their potential impacts, their (institutional and behavioural) mechanisms and challenges, and caveats and recommendations for their design and implementation. Our review shows that PIs can indeed foster collective action by (a) helping the relevant actors craft suitable and legitimate institutional arrangements and (b) addressing and/or influencing actors' attributes of relevance to collective action, namely their individual and shared understandings, beliefs and preferences. To fulfil this potential, the organisers and sponsors of PIs must address and link to the broader context through soundly designed and implemented processes. Complementary follow-up, enforcement and conflict resolution mechanisms are necessary to nurture, reassure and sustain understandings, beliefs and preferences that undergird trust-building and collective action. The conceptual framework developed for the review can help researchers and practitioners further assess these insights, disentangle PIs' mechanisms and impacts, and integrate the research and practice of participatory governance and collective action.

Conditional cooperation and costly monitoring explain success in forest commons management.

Recent evidence suggests that prosocial behaviors like conditional cooperation and costly norm enforcement can stabilize large-scale cooperation for commons management. However, field evidence on the extent to which variation in these behaviors among actual commons users accounts for natural commons outcomes is altogether missing. Here, we combine experimental measures of conditional cooperation and survey measures on costly monitoring among 49 forest user groups in Ethiopia with measures of natural forest commons outcomes to show that (i) groups vary in conditional cooperator share, (ii) groups with larger conditional cooperator share are more successful in forest commons management, and (iii) costly monitoring is a key instrument with which conditional cooperators enforce cooperation. Our findings are consistent with models of gene-culture coevolution on human cooperation and provide external validity to laboratory experiments on social dilemmas.