The role of co-benefits in motivating climate change mitigation – Experimental evidence

Abstract

We study the role of co-benefits – positive effects of climate change mitigation projects in addition to CO2 reduction – in motivating individuals to donate to such projects. In two artefactual field experiments conducted with large population samples (n = 2400 in total), we test how the existence and specific nature of co-benefits affect donations. In both experiments, we find that co-benefits have a positive impact on participants' willingness to donate. Moreover, our second experiment shows that contributions respond to the nature of co-benefits, and these responses seem to be driven by individuals' preferences for specific types of co-benefits. We further observe that co-benefits also increase donations when making carbon footprints and thus individual responsibility for environmental externalities more salient. In sum, our study provides a comprehensive picture of the potential of co-benefits for increasing donations to climate change mitigation projects and has several implications for the provision of co-benefits information in practice.