Conference Agenda

In both families and states, pay-it-forward schemes --- where one cohort invests in the next (e.g., via education) with the expectation of future returns (e.g., via retirement support) --- play a crucial role. However, the upfront costs of such schemes and the uncertainty of future returns raise questions about the extent to which they can be sustained through private contributions. We investigate, through a theoretically motivated experiment, whether altruism, reciprocity, and self-interest can motivate forward investments. Specifically, we conduct a large-scale online experiment in which an overlapping sequence of players (representative generations) allocate an endowment between themselves and future, prior, or contemporary players. By varying both the action set and information available, we disentangle the mechanisms driving forward investments. We find that the ability to give back significantly increases willingness to give forward, even without information that would allow players to condition their actions on past behavior. This suggests that a preference for implicit reciprocity, rather than self-interested tit-for-tat strategies or explicit reciprocity, underlies this behavior.

Intergenerational public goods, such as climate change mitigation or resource preservation, depend on the willingness of current generations to incur costs for benefits they will not directly enjoy. Leadership has been proposed as a key mechanism to foster cooperation for the sake of future generations, yet its efficacy and dynamics remain poorly understood. In this study, we provide causal evidence on the role of leadership in promoting intergenerational resource conservation using the intergenerational goods game (IGG), an experimental paradigm in which successive groups make decisions that affect future generations. Our findings reveal that groups with a leader significantly outperform leaderless groups in sustaining resources, even in groups where self-interested preferences predominate. However, voluntary leadership is rare, and the mere opportunity for leadership can backfire: if no leader emerges, outcomes are no better or even worse than in a experimental condition where leadership opportunities are absent. These results highlight both the potential and the limitations of leadership in addressing intergenerational challenges, offering novel insights for designing policies aimed at sustaining public goods critical for future generations.

This paper examines how the immediate targets of non-violent civil disobedience and information about carbon inequality influence public acceptance of climate protests and support for related climate policies. Using a large-scale lab-in-the-field experiment with 5,200 participants in Germany, we randomly exposed participants to images of non-violent civil disobedience targeting either average citizens (e.g., obstructing traffic) or wealthy individuals (e.g., defacing a private jet). Participants were also provided with information comparing their carbon footprints to those of either average citizens or billionaires to emphasize disparities in climate impact between both groups. Our findings show that acceptance of non-violent civil disobedience is generally low, and financial support for organizations associated with these actions, such as Fridays for Future and the Last Generation, is significantly lower than for other environmental groups like Greenpeace and WWF. However, acceptance slightly increases when protests target wealthy individuals, particularly when paired with information highlighting the disproportionate emissions of billionaires compared to average citizens. Despite this modest increase in acceptance, we find no significant effect on financial contributions to organizations linked to non-violent civil disobedience or on support for stricter climate policies. These results suggest that while targeting wealthy individuals and emphasizing carbon inequality can modestly improve public attitudes toward non-violent civil disobedience, these strategies have limited potential to generate broader public support or tangible financial backing for climate protest movements.

The economic and psychological literature on second-hand consumption has identified specific drivers and barriers on the part of consumers. Those drivers/barriers are related to concerns for one’s image, such as how one sees oneself (self-image), how one perceives to be seen by others (social image), and how one perceives that others see themselves when consuming second-hand items (second-order self-image). In this paper, we investigate how one’s self-image, social image, and second-order self-image affect intention to engage in second-hand consumption through a vignette experiment involving a large, nationally representative sample of the Italian population (N = 10, 496). We also study how the relative importance of these considerations varies across product types and their attributes (condition and price). We find that perceptions of being financially savvy, socially approved, environmentally conscious, and not feeling disgusted when engaging in second-hand consumption are all relevant factors, even though their relevance in affecting the consumption choice is different depending on whether they affect the individual’s self-image, social image or second-order self-image.