Resource heterogeneity leads to unjust effort distribution in climate change mitigation

TL;DR

This study shows that resource inequality causes uneven effort in climate change mitigation, with poorer individuals contributing more, highlighting the need for policies focused on climate justice and fairness.

Contribution

It reveals how resource heterogeneity influences effort distribution in collective climate actions and classifies participant behaviors using unsupervised learning.

Findings

Effort distribution is highly inequitable despite achieving collective goals.

Poorest participants tend to be more generous, contributing more than richer counterparts.

Behavioral clustering links generosity with lower resources and greed with higher resources.

Abstract

Fighting against climate change is a global challenge shared by nations with heterogeneous economical resources and individuals with diverse propensity for cooperation. However, we lack a clear understanding of the role of key factors such as inequality of means when diverse agents interact together towards a common goal. Here, we report the results of a collective-risk dilemma experiment in which groups of subjects were initially given either equal or unequal endowments. We found that although the collective goal was always achieved regardless of the initial capital distribution, the effort distribution was highly inequitable. Specifically, participants with fewer resources contributed significantly more to the public goods than the richer -sometimes twice as much. An unsupervised learning algorithm clustered the subjects according to their individual behavior. We found that the poorest participants congregated within the two "generous clusters" whereas the richest were mostly classified into a "greedy cluster". Our findings suggest that future policies would benefit both from reinforcing climate justice actions addressed to most vulnerable people and educating fairness instead of focusing on understanding of generic or global climate consequences, as the latter has not proven to drive equitable contributions.