de Lint Lotte, Roßmann Maximilian, Vostroknutov Alexander
Consumption and Healthy Lifestyles Group, Wageningen University and Research, 6706 KN Wageningen, The Netherlands.
Department of History, Maastricht University, 6211 SZ Maastricht, The Netherlands.
PNAS Nexus. 2024 Apr 9;3(4):pgae149. doi: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae149. eCollection 2024 Apr.
We propose a new methodology to systematically transform presurveyed argument preferences into fictional narratives, that can help people to imagine the consequences of future events, and measure how they impact willingness to pay for a public policy. We apply narrative theory to construct two short narratives that depict an imaginary future, bleak due to climate change or energy dependence, and show experimentally that exposure to these narratives increases contributions in a Public Goods game, framed as payments toward the construction of new nuclear plant in The Netherlands. Our results suggest that fictional narratives can be used (and misused) as a tool of economic policy that allows conveying relevant information to people about complex issues. We discuss the ethical use of narratives and the value of their transparent construction for democratic will-formation and policy implementation when abstract factual information can be difficult to process or comprehend.
我们提出了一种新方法，可将预先调查的论点偏好系统地转化为虚构叙事，这有助于人们想象未来事件的后果，并衡量这些后果如何影响他们为一项公共政策支付费用的意愿。我们运用叙事理论构建了两个简短叙事，描绘了一个因气候变化或能源依赖而黯淡的想象未来，并通过实验表明，接触这些叙事会增加公共物品博弈中的贡献，该博弈被设定为向荷兰新核电站建设的付款。我们的结果表明，虚构叙事可以（也可能被滥用）作为一种经济政策工具，用于向人们传达有关复杂问题的相关信息。我们讨论了叙事的道德使用以及在抽象事实信息难以处理或理解时，其透明构建对于民主意愿形成和政策实施的价值。
