Economic Status Might be Related to a Society’s Efforts towards Preventing Climate Change

NYU Shanghai Postdoc Evgeniya Lukinova has recently contributed to a study which showed that a society’s efforts to implement policies for combating climate change might be linked with its economic status. In a laboratory experiment, researchers found those at high levels of economic status and with multiple resources are more willing to forgo additional wealth to reduce the severity of climate change whilst those at low levels are more reluctant to do so.

This research was conducted in collaboration with Reuben Kline’s group at Stony Brook University, and has been published in a recent issue of Nature Human Behaviour. The findings might help explain why it is difficult to have international agreements among countries with economies of different sizes on policies affecting climate change mitigation.

Journal Reference:

Kline, R., Seltzer, N., Lukinova, E. and Bynum, A., 2018. Differentiated responsibilities and prosocial behaviour in climate change mitigation. Nature Human Behaviour, 2(9), p.653.