Many countries, such as Germany, struggle to vaccinate enough people against COVID-19 despite the availability of safe and efficient vaccines. With new variants emerging and the need for booster ...vaccinations, overcoming vaccination hesitancy gains importance. The research to date has revealed some promising, albeit contentious, interventions to increase vaccination intention. However, these have yet to be tested for their effectiveness in increasing vaccination rates. We conducted a preregistered survey experiment with N = 1,324 participants in Germany in May/June 2021. This was followed by a series of emails reminding participants to get vaccinated in August and concluded with a follow-up survey in September. We experimentally assess whether debunking vaccination myths, highlighting the benefits of being vaccinated, or sending vaccination reminders decreases hesitancy. In the survey experiment, we find no increase in the intention to vaccinate regardless of the information provided. However, communicating vaccination benefits over several weeks reduced the likelihood of not being vaccinated by 9 percentage points, which translates into a 27% reduction compared to the control group. Debunking vaccination myths and reminders alone also decreased the likelihood, yet not significantly. Our findings suggest that if soft governmental interventions such as information campaigns are employed, highlighting benefits should be given preference over debunking vaccination myths. Furthermore, it seems that repeated messages affect vaccination action while one-time messages might be insufficient, even for increasing vaccination intentions. Our study highlights the importance of testing interventions outside of survey experiments that are limited to measuring vaccination intentions-not actions-and immediate changes in attitudes and intentions-not long-term changes.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Non-technical summary
More and more people around the globe experience climate hazards. For vulnerable populations, these hazards not only cause significant physical damages, but can also affect the ...way people interact with each other. How such interactions are affected by climate hazards is particularly important for understanding the vulnerability of communities. Prosocial behavior is key for communities that heavily rely on informal social support to deal with these threats and for cooperative solutions to provide and maintain public goods. To investigate these effects, we talk to people living on the front lines of climate change and measure their prosociality using behavioral tasks. Our results show that both fast- and slow-onset hazards increase prosociality, underscoring the importance of well-functioning social relationships for dealing with hardship and uncertainty in a variety of contexts.
Technical summary
People's willingness to engage in prosocial behavior can affect how vulnerable and resilient populations are to climate hazards. We study how different types of climate hazards, fast-onsetting cyclones and slowly rising sea-levels, might affect peoples' prosociality using incentivized behavioral tasks. We sample people who are at the forefront of climate change and either experienced Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines (study 1;
n
= 378) or are from sea-level rise hotspots (study 2;
n
= 1047) in Solomon Islands, Bangladesh, and Vietnam. We experimentally manipulate the salience of these hazards through recall or informational videos. Results from study 1 show that increases in prosociality are (i) independent of whether supportive behaviors or conflicts are recalled, (ii) are not only targeted to a narrow in-group, and (iii) do not come with increases in antisocial behaviors. In study 2, we also find that people behave more prosocial when they are informed about the impacts of rising sea-levels. Our survey evidence suggests that people who already perceive the threat of displacement due to rising sea-levels are also more prosocial. Overall, peoples' responses to both types of hazards are geared toward collective action, which could strengthen their adaptive capacity to deal with climate risks.
Social media summary
People severely affected by sea-level rise and rapidly emerging climate hazards are responding with increases in prosocial behaviors to fellow villagers.
Climate change is projected to increase the number of extreme weather events, which may lead to cascading impacts, feedbacks, and tipping points not only in the biophysical system but also in the ...social system. To better understand societal resilience in risky environments, we analyzed people’s attachment to place, their willingness to take risks, and how these change in response to extreme weather events. We conducted a survey with 624 respondents at the forefront of climate change in Asia: the river deltas in Bangladesh and Vietnam. Our findings confirm that most people prefer staying. Yet crucially, we find that (i) self-reported experiences of climate-related hazards are associated with increased risk aversion and place attachment, reinforcing people’s preferences to stay in hazardous environments; (ii) people with experiences of hazards are more likely aspiring to move to high-income destinations, arguably being beyond the reach of their capacities; and (iii) changes in aspirations to move abroad are connected to the changes in risk aversion and place attachment. The fact that preferences are associated with cumulative experiences of hazards and interact with aspirations to move to high-income destinations may contribute to our understanding of why so many people stay in hazardous environments.
Climate hazards destroy the livelihoods and assets of millions of people worldwide, but also spur solidarity within affected communities. We conducted a pre-registered incentivized online experiment ...with a sample of 769 UK residents to better understand solidarity behavior framed in the context of flooding. In the experiment, participants make costly adaptation decisions that reduce their own risk of endowment loss. Moreover, they can make solidarity transfers to affected partners if unaffected themselves. Participants are matched with a partner who takes adaptation decisions, too. We experimentally vary the adaptation costs of the partner to be either the same (control condition) or heterogenous (known or uncertain). In the control condition, participants show less solidarity with non-adapted partners than with adapted ones. On average, the heterogenous adaptation cost treatments do not significantly affect observed solidarity transfers. Explorative analyses indicate, however, that differences in transfers to adapted and non-adapted partners are mediated by one's adaptation behavior. Under known heterogenous adaptation costs, risk-averse players (who adapted themselves) show as much solidarity with adapted as with non-adapted partners. Overall, the results suggest that information about adaptation cost heterogeneity may promote solidarity after exogenous shocks when people cannot easily adapt proactively.
•Experiment to study solidarity after exogenous shocks and endowment loss.•Players could reduce risks by costly adaptation.•Solidarity transfers to non-adapted partners lower than to adapted partners.•This discrimination is also present if partners faced high adaptation costs.•Risk averse players don't discriminate under heterogeneous costs.
This paper presents novel evidence of no crowding out, of either motivations or donations, among those terminated from an ongoing program of payments for ecosystem services (PES) in Colombia. PES ...programs have risen in number. However, claims about perverse impacts after programs end could inhibit their growth. PES end for different reasons (planned duration, budget reduction, issues in implementation) and in different ways (some participants or all). An expressed concern for PES is that receiving payments lowers conservation, after PES end, if participants' intrinsic motivations for conservation are ‘crowded out’ by financial incentives. We test for crowding out by an ongoing program in which some but not all contracts were terminated. We see no evidence of crowding out, since neither the motivations nor the donations for the terminated farmers are significantly different than for non-PES land owners (and this is robust to matching on levels of assets, residence on farm past donation behavior, main economic activity, and participation in collective activities). Our results add evidence from an actual PES to literature questioning the relevance, importance and even sign of crowding effects.
We study how economic, conflict, and environmental drivers of migration influence immigration acceptance in a receiving country. We carried out an online survey experiment in autumn 2015 with 686 ...student participants from the University of Innsbruck in Austria. In the survey experiment, respondents state their acceptance for a fictitious migrant from Chad where we vary the following causes of the migration decision: (1) violent conflicts, (2) environmental degradation due to global climate change, (3) environmental degradation due to local overuse, and (4) better economic prospects. We find that respondents support migrants who move because of climate change as much as conflict migrants. Acceptance is lowest for migrants who decide to leave for economic reasons, while it is slightly higher in the case of environmental degradation due to local overuse. Strikingly, a sizable share of respondents (25%) would even reject conflict migrants. Respondents who perceive a negative correlation between welfare, crime rates and job opportunities, and the presence of immigrants display lower immigration acceptance for all motives underlying the migration decision. In addition, we find heterogeneous effects depending on the respondents’ gender and political affiliation. Respondents with right-wing party preferences disclose lower acceptance levels for all causes except conflict. Female respondents are more accepting of climate migrants and less of economic migrants than men. This paper informs the debate around the ongoing political and societal polarization in Europe and elsewhere on the acceptance of different types of migrants.
Decentralization of water management in Namibia follows a community-based co-management approach, emphasizing the inclusion of women in local leadership. Building on a random sample of 32 water point ...chairpersons, 17 female and 15 male, and 384 villagers in rural northern Namibia, we document that women are equally represented as chairpersons and that they are significantly more educated and younger than their male counterparts. However, most of the female leaders come from the family of the traditional leader. We then show that opinions about the role of a leader (such as the belief that ‘men make better leaders’ or ‘it is sometimes acceptable to take a bribe’) do not differ between male and female leaders. However, their opinions differ significantly from those of the average villager. Thus, our assessment reveals that although men and women are equally represented in numbers, it has not necessarily led to the adoption of new ideas about and conceptions of leadership and gender roles in practice so far. We discuss how some aspects of the democratic blueprint are accepted while others are rejected, adapted, or transformed to fit local specificities.
•Decentralization of water management in Namibia shows that women are equally represented.•Female leaders are more educated and younger than their male counterparts.•Most female leaders are related to the traditional leaders – reinforcing existing power structures.•It has not led to the adoption of new ideas and values of leadership so far.
Rising sea levels are projected to affect millions of coastal inhabitants, as climate change is threatening livelihoods all over the world. Those in charge of policy in affected areas will have to ...weigh the costs and benefits of moving people and communities out of harm's way (retreat) versus accommodating and protecting them in situ (resist). Decision-making solely based on direct material benefits of a location neglects other value types that are crucial to accurately reflect the actual valuation of the land. Relational values arise from the human-nature relationship and have recently been recognized as an important source of valuation for land beyond material benefits. However, since relational values are difficult to determine, incorporating them in the decision-making presents a challenge. Our contention is that the implementation of deliberative and inclusive approaches, such as citizens' assemblies, can serve as an effective means of developing adaptation policies that incorporate relational values.
Time discounting – the degree to which individuals value current more than future resources – is an important component of natural resource conservation. As a response to climate change impacts in ...island communities, such as sea level rise, discounting the future can be a rational response due to increased stress on natural resources and uncertainty about whether future generations will have the same access to the same resources. By incorporating systematic responses of discount rates into models of resource conservation, realistic expectations of future human responses to climate change and associated resource stress may be developed. This paper illustrates the importance of time discounting through a theoretical agent-based model of resource use in island communities. A discount rate change can dramatically change projections about future migration and community-based conservation efforts. Our simulation results show that an increase in discount rates due to a credible information shock about future climate change impacts is likely to speed resource depletion. The negative impacts of climate change are therefore likely to be underestimated if changes in discount rates and emerging migration patterns are not taken into account.
This study tests the common conception that democratically elected leaders behave in the interest of their constituents more than traditional chiefs do. Our sample includes 64 village leaders and 384 ...villagers in rural Namibia, where democratically elected leaders and traditional chiefs coexist. We analyze two main attributes of local political leaders: procedural fairness preferences and preferential treatment of relatives (nepotism). We also measure personality traits and social preferences, and conduct standardized surveys on local governance practices and villagers' perceptions of their leaders' performance. Our results indicate that traditional chiefs are as likely to implement fair, democratic decision-making procedures, and are as unlikely to be nepotistic. Moreover, elected leaders and chiefs express similar social preferences and personality traits. These findings align with villagers' perceptions of most leaders in our sample as being popular and fair, and villagers' responses reveal a discrepancy between planned and de facto implementation of democratic institutions.
PDF
