Agneman Gustav, Henriks Sofia, Bäck Hanna, Renström Emma
Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7030, Trondheim, Norway.
Department of Economics, Gothenburg University, 40530, Gothenburg, Sweden.
PNAS Nexus. 2024 Mar 13;3(4):pgae105. doi: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae105. eCollection 2024 Apr.
Climate mitigation constitutes an intergenerational moral dilemma; the decisions we make today will inevitably shape the prospects for generations to come. Yet, we still know little about the relationship between intergenerational altruism (IGA)-our concerns for the well-being of future generations-and support for costly climate mitigation policies. In this study, we present an approach to measuring IGA through an intergenerational dilemma, where participants allocate resources across generations. First, we describe how IGA depends on the temporal (social) distance between generations and demonstrate robust correlations between IGA and support for several climate policies. Then, we leverage randomized participation in the intergenerational dilemma to show that it causally increases climate policy support, an effect we attribute to higher worries about human-induced climate change among treated subjects. An exploratory heterogeneity analysis suggests that the impact of the intergenerational dilemma is primarily driven by female and nonbinary participants. In sum, this study presents both a novel measurement strategy and robust evidence of a malleable moral basis of climate policy preferences.
减缓气候变化构成了一个代际道德困境；我们今天做出的决定将不可避免地塑造后代的前景。然而，我们对代际利他主义（IGA）——我们对后代福祉的关注——与对成本高昂的气候缓解政策的支持之间的关系仍然知之甚少。在本研究中，我们提出了一种通过代际困境来衡量IGA的方法，参与者在各代之间分配资源。首先，我们描述了IGA如何取决于代际之间的时间（社会）距离，并证明了IGA与对若干气候政策的支持之间存在显著相关性。然后，我们利用在代际困境中的随机参与来表明，它会因果性地增加对气候政策的支持，我们将这种效应归因于接受处理的受试者对人为气候变化的更高担忧。一项探索性异质性分析表明，代际困境的影响主要由女性和非二元性别参与者驱动。总之，本研究既提出了一种新颖的测量策略，也提供了气候政策偏好具有可塑性的道德基础的有力证据。
