The Cost of Climate Action: Experimental Evidence on the Impact of Climate Information on Charitable Donations to Climate Activism

TL;DR

This study investigates how different types of climate information and protest imagery affect individuals' charitable donations to climate activism, revealing complex influences on donation behavior and climate concern.

Contribution

It provides experimental evidence on how climate information and protest imagery influence donation amounts and climate concern, highlighting nuanced effects.

Findings

Climate activism donations were higher than in previous experiments.

Climate information negatively affected donation amounts.

Protest imagery increased climate concern and moderated negative effects.

Abstract

We examine the propensity of individuals to donate to climate activism, evaluating the impact of different informational treatments on an incentive compatible charitable donation and stated climate change-related concerns. Participants were evaluated on climate literacy and general climate attitudes before being randomly assigned to a treatment which provided either education or neutral language about climate change, either with or without images of protest. After the treatment, participants engaged in an incentive compatible dictator game. We find that participants gave more to climate activism than seen in previous dictator game and charitable giving experiments, in both average amount given and proportion of participants who gave their entire endowment. However, we determine that climate activism information negatively influenced the amount of money donated. We also found that protest imagery moderated this negative effect and had a positive significant effect of increasing participants' climate concern. Finally, we found that the climate concern was significantly positively correlated with donations, while being a male was significantly negatively associated with donation amounts.