Wealth and Vulnerability to Climate Change: An Experimental Study on Burden Sharing among Heterogeneous Agents

Agents in global climate negotiations differ with respect to their vulnerability to the negative consequences of climate change, but also their ability to contribute to its prevention. Due to this multidimensional heterogeneity, agents disagree about how the costs of emission reduction ought to be shared and, as a consequence, efficiency is low. This experiment varies the two dimensions separately in a controlled setting. The results show that in groups that succeed in reaching a predefined threshold, the rich and the more vulnerable, ceteris paribus, tend to carry a larger share of the burden. Surprisingly, groups are most likely to master the challenge when poverty coincides with high vulnerability. In this case the rich and less vulnerable abstain from interpreting fair burden sharing in a self-serving manner. Instead, they seem to acknowledge the double-disadvantaged position of the poor and more vulnerable and voluntarily carry a larger share of the burden.