Leiden University Student Repository

Dijkhuis, Amber (2022)

Paying the costs of climate change: global distribution preferences and cultural dimensions

Master thesis | Psychology (MSc)

Reducing the harmful effects of climate change on the planet is one of the most important, yet challenging issues countries across the world are currently facing. Doing so requires cooperation, but collectively mitigating the effects of climate change results in a public goods dilemma in which everyone benefits, despite contributing to the costs accompanied. With this, questions regarding fairness on distributing these costs arise. This study adds to the small body of literature on solving public goods dilemmas related to climate change by examining how the six cultural dimensions defined by Hofstede (2001) correlate with the preference to pay more to reduce the effects of climate change. Doing so, the distribution preferences of 3771 participants in 51 countries were measures. The results show that long-term orientation correlates with the preference to pay more, especially for the richest set of countries. Individualism, power distance, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and...Show moreReducing the harmful effects of climate change on the planet is one of the most important, yet challenging issues countries across the world are currently facing. Doing so requires cooperation, but collectively mitigating the effects of climate change results in a public goods dilemma in which everyone benefits, despite contributing to the costs accompanied. With this, questions regarding fairness on distributing these costs arise. This study adds to the small body of literature on solving public goods dilemmas related to climate change by examining how the six cultural dimensions defined by Hofstede (2001) correlate with the preference to pay more to reduce the effects of climate change. Doing so, the distribution preferences of 3771 participants in 51 countries were measures. The results show that long-term orientation correlates with the preference to pay more, especially for the richest set of countries. Individualism, power distance, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and indulgence do not significantly correlate to the preference to pay more to reduce the effects of climate change, contradicting previous research on public good dilemmas and pro-environmental behavior. Implications of these findings, alongside limitations of the study and further research directions are discussed.Show less

Climate change, public goods dilemma, pro-environmental behavior, culture, distribution preferences

Author

Dijkhuis, Amber

Faculty

Faculty of Social & Behavioural Sciences

Specialisation

Economic and Consumer

Supervisors

Stallen, M.

ECTS Credits

20

Language

en