[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lsg/lsgwps/wp257.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Carbon offsets out of the woods? The acceptability of domestic vs. international reforestation programmes

Author

Listed:
  • Andrea Baranzini
  • Nicolas Borzykowski
  • Stefano Carattini
Abstract
Following the entry into force of the Paris Agreement in November 2016, governments around the world are now asked to turn their nationally determined contributions into concrete climate policies. Economic arguments justify implementing carbon pricing to achieve emission abatement targets in a cost-effective way, including the possibility to offset domestic greenhouse gas emissions in foreign countries. However, abating emissions abroad instead of domestically may face important political and popular resistance. We run a lab experiment with more than 300 participants by asking them to choose between a domestic and an international reforestation project. We test the effect of three informational treatments on the allocation of participants’ endowment between the domestic and the international project. The treatments consist in: (1) making more salient the cost-effectiveness gains associated with offsetting carbon abroad (2) providing guarantees on the reliability of reforestation programmes (3) stressing local ancillary benefits associated with domestic offset projects. We find that stressing the cost-effectiveness of the reforestation programme abroad is the best way to increase its support, the economic argument in favour of offsetting abroad being largely overlooked by participants. We relate this finding to the recent literature on the drivers of public support for climate policies, generally pointing to a gap between people’s preferences and economists’ prescriptions.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrea Baranzini & Nicolas Borzykowski & Stefano Carattini, 2016. "Carbon offsets out of the woods? The acceptability of domestic vs. international reforestation programmes," GRI Working Papers 257, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    • Handle: RePEc:lsg:lsgwps:wp257
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Working-Paper-257-Baranzini-et-al.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ovchinnikova, Natalia V. & Czap, Hans J. & Lynne, Gary D. & Larimer, Christopher W., 2009. ""I don't want to be selling my soul": Two experiments in environmental economics," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 221-229, March.
    2. Nyborg, Karine & Howarth, Richard B. & Brekke, Kjell Arne, 2006. "Green consumers and public policy: On socially contingent moral motivation," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 351-366, November.
    3. Tavoni, Massimo & Sohngen, Brent & Bosetti, Valentina, 2007. "Forestry and the carbon market response to stabilize climate," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(11), pages 5346-5353, November.
    4. Armin Falk & James J. Heckman, 2009. "Lab Experiments are a Major Source of Knowledge in the Social Sciences," Working Papers 200935, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    5. Löfgren, Åsa & Martinsson, Peter & Hennlock, Magnus & Sterner, Thomas, 2012. "Are experienced people affected by a pre-set default option—Results from a field experiment," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 66-72.
    6. Anna Alberini & James R. Kahn (ed.), 2006. "Handbook on Contingent Valuation," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1893.
    7. Fredrik Carlsson & Mitesh Kataria & Alan Krupnick & Elina Lampi & Åsa Löfgren & Ping Qin & Susie Chun & Thomas Sterner, 2012. "Paying for Mitigation: A Multiple Country Study," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 88(2), pages 326-340.
    8. Stefano Carattini & Alessandro Tavoni, 2016. "How green are green economists?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 36(4), pages 2311-2323.
    9. Lambert Schneider, 2009. "Assessing the additionality of CDM projects: practical experiences and lessons learned," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(3), pages 242-254, May.
    10. Matthew J. Kotchen, 2009. "Voluntary Provision of Public Goods for Bads: A Theory of Environmental Offsets," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(537), pages 883-899, April.
    11. Steffen Kallbekken & Stephan Kroll & Todd L Cherry, 2010. "Pigouvian tax aversion and inequity aversion in the lab," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 30(3), pages 1914-1921.
    12. van Kooten, G. Cornelis & Eagle, Alison J. & Manley, James G. & Smolak, Tara M., 2004. "How Costly Are Carbon Offsets? A Meta-Analysis Of Carbon Forest Sinks," Working Papers 18166, University of Victoria, Resource Economics and Policy.
    13. Marc N. Conte & Matthew J. Kotchen, 2010. "Explaining The Price Of Voluntary Carbon Offsets," Climate Change Economics (CCE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 1(02), pages 93-111.
    14. Andrea Baranzini & Stefano Carattini, 2017. "Effectiveness, earmarking and labeling: testing the acceptability of carbon taxes with survey data," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 19(1), pages 197-227, January.
    15. Stefano Carattini & Andrea Baranzini & Philippe Thalmann & Frédéric Varone & Frank Vöhringer, 2017. "Green Taxes in a Post-Paris World: Are Millions of Nays Inevitable?," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 68(1), pages 97-128, September.
    16. Elberg Nielsen, Anne Sofie & Plantinga, Andrew J. & Alig, Ralph J., 2014. "Mitigating climate change through afforestation: New cost estimates for the United States," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 83-98.
    17. Braaten, Ragnhild Haugli & Brekke, Kjell Arne & Rogeberg, Ole, 2015. "Buying the right to do wrong – An experimental test of moral objections to trading emission permits," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 110-124.
    18. Jean Tirole, 2012. "Some Political Economy of Global Warming," Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1).
    19. Gren, Ing-Marie & Zeleke, Abenezer Aklilu, 2016. "Policy design for forest carbon sequestration: A review of the literature," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 128-136.
    20. Andreoni, James, 1990. "Impure Altruism and Donations to Public Goods: A Theory of Warm-Glow Giving?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 100(401), pages 464-477, June.
    21. Elmar Kriegler & John Weyant & Geoffrey Blanford & Volker Krey & Leon Clarke & Jae Edmonds & Allen Fawcett & Gunnar Luderer & Keywan Riahi & Richard Richels & Steven Rose & Massimo Tavoni & Detlef Vuu, 2014. "The role of technology for achieving climate policy objectives: overview of the EMF 27 study on global technology and climate policy strategies," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 123(3), pages 353-367, April.
    22. Carattini, Stefano & Baranzini, Andrea & Lalive, Rafael, 2018. "Is Taxing Waste a Waste of Time? Evidence from a Supreme Court Decision," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 148(C), pages 131-151.
    23. Elinor Ostrom, 2014. "A Polycentric Approach For Coping With Climate Change," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 15(1), pages 97-134, May.
    24. Czajkowski, Mikołaj & Bartczak, Anna & Giergiczny, Marek & Navrud, Stale & Żylicz, Tomasz, 2014. "Providing preference-based support for forest ecosystem service management," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 1-12.
    25. Valentin Bellassen & Sebastiaan Luyssaert, 2014. "Carbon sequestration: Managing forests in uncertain times," Nature, Nature, vol. 506(7487), pages 153-155, February.
    26. Bristow, Abigail L. & Wardman, Mark & Zanni, Alberto M. & Chintakayala, Phani K., 2010. "Public acceptability of personal carbon trading and carbon tax," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(9), pages 1824-1837, July.
    27. Kallbekken, Steffen & Sælen, Håkon, 2011. "Public acceptance for environmental taxes: Self-interest, environmental and distributional concerns," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(5), pages 2966-2973, May.
    28. Tien Ming Lee & Ezra M. Markowitz & Peter D. Howe & Chia-Ying Ko & Anthony A. Leiserowitz, 2015. "Predictors of public climate change awareness and risk perception around the world," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 5(11), pages 1014-1020, November.
    29. Sclen, Håkon & Kallbekken, Steffen, 2011. "A choice experiment on fuel taxation and earmarking in Norway," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(11), pages 2181-2190, September.
    30. Lambert Schneider & Anja Kollmuss, 2015. "Perverse effects of carbon markets on HFC-23 and SF6 abatement projects in Russia," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 5(12), pages 1061-1063, December.
    31. Claudia Schwirplies & Andreas Ziegler, 2016. "Offset carbon emissions or pay a price premium for avoiding them? A cross-country analysis of motives for climate protection activities," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(9), pages 746-758, February.
    32. Blasch, Julia & Ohndorf, Markus, 2015. "Altruism, moral norms and social approval: Joint determinants of individual offset behavior," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 251-260.
    33. Kevin Anderson, 2012. "The inconvenient truth of carbon offsets," Nature, Nature, vol. 484(7392), pages 7-7, April.
    34. Stefano Carattini & Alessandro Tavoni, 2016. "How green are economists?," GRI Working Papers 247, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    35. James Alm & Kim M. Bloomquist & Michael McKee, 2015. "On The External Validity Of Laboratory Tax Compliance Experiments," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 53(2), pages 1170-1186, April.
    36. Johannes Diederich & Timo Goeschl, 2014. "Willingness to Pay for Voluntary Climate Action and Its Determinants: Field-Experimental Evidence," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 57(3), pages 405-429, March.
    37. Roca, Jordi, 2003. "Do individual preferences explain the Environmental Kuznets curve?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 3-10, April.
    38. Cherry, Todd L. & Kallbekken, Steffen & Kroll, Stephan, 2014. "The impact of trial runs on the acceptability of environmental taxes: Experimental evidence," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 84-95.
    39. Tiezzi, Silvia & Xiao, Erte, 2016. "Time delay, complexity and support for taxation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 117-141.
    40. Julia Blasch & Mehdi Farsi, 2014. "Context effects and heterogeneity in voluntary carbon offsetting - a choice experiment in Switzerland," Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(1), pages 1-24, March.
    41. Papke, Leslie E & Wooldridge, Jeffrey M, 1996. "Econometric Methods for Fractional Response Variables with an Application to 401(K) Plan Participation Rates," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(6), pages 619-632, Nov.-Dec..
    42. Matthew J. Kotchen, 2009. "Voluntary Provision of Public Goods for Bads: A Theory of Environmental Offsets," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(537), pages 883-899, April.
    43. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher, 2003. "The nature of human altruism," Nature, Nature, vol. 425(6960), pages 785-791, October.
    44. MacKerron, George J. & Egerton, Catrin & Gaskell, Christopher & Parpia, Aimie & Mourato, Susana, 2009. "Willingness to pay for carbon offset certification and co-benefits among (high-)flying young adults in the UK," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 1372-1381, April.
    45. Lawrence H. Goulder & Ian W. H. Parry, 2008. "Instrument Choice in Environmental Policy," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 2(2), pages 152-174, Summer.
    46. Kallbekken, Steffen & Kroll, Stephan & Cherry, Todd L., 2011. "Do you not like Pigou, or do you not understand him? Tax aversion and revenue recycling in the lab," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 53-64, July.
    47. G. Cornelis van Kooten & Alison Eagle & James Manley & Tara Smolak, 2004. "How Costly are Carbon Offsets? A Meta-Analysis of Forest Carbon Sinks," Working Papers 2004-01, University of Victoria, Department of Economics, Resource Economics and Policy Analysis Research Group.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lea S. Svenningsen & Bo Jellesmark Thorsen, 2020. "Preferences for Distributional Impacts of Climate Policy," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 75(1), pages 1-24, January.
    2. Lea Skræp Svenningsen, 2017. "Distributive outcomes matter: Measuring social preferences for climate policy," IFRO Working Paper 2017/11, University of Copenhagen, Department of Food and Resource Economics.
    3. Diederich, Johannes & Goeschl, Timo, 2017. "Does Mitigation Begin At Home?," Working Papers 0634, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    4. Diederich, Johannes & Goeschl, Timo, 2018. "Voluntary action for climate change mitigation does not exhibit locational preferences," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 175-180.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Baranzini, Andrea & Borzykowski, Nicolas & Carattini, Stefano, 2018. "Carbon offsets out of the woods? Acceptability of domestic vs. international reforestation programmes in the lab," Journal of Forest Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 1-12.
    2. Stefano Carattini & Andrea Baranzini & Philippe Thalmann & Frédéric Varone & Frank Vöhringer, 2017. "Green Taxes in a Post-Paris World: Are Millions of Nays Inevitable?," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 68(1), pages 97-128, September.
    3. Stefano Carattini & Alessandro Tavoni, 2016. "How green are economists?," GRI Working Papers 247, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    4. Stefano Carattini & Maria Carvalho & Sam Fankhauser, 2018. "Overcoming public resistance to carbon taxes," Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 9(5), September.
    5. Stefano Carattini & Alessandro Tavoni, 2016. "How green are green economists?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 36(4), pages 2311-2323.
    6. Alberini, Anna & Ščasný, Milan & Bigano, Andrea, 2018. "Policy- v. individual heterogeneity in the benefits of climate change mitigation: Evidence from a stated-preference survey," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 565-575.
    7. Kai-Uwe Kuhn & Neslihan Uler, 2019. "Behavioral sources of the demand for carbon offsets: an experimental study," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 22(3), pages 676-704, September.
    8. Douenne, Thomas & Fabre, Adrien, 2020. "French attitudes on climate change, carbon taxation and other climate policies," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    9. Stefano Carattini & Simon Levin & Alessandro Tavoni, 2019. "Cooperation in the Climate Commons," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 13(2), pages 227-247.
    10. Umit, Resul & Schaffer, Lena Maria, 2020. "Attitudes towards carbon taxes across Europe: The role of perceived uncertainty and self-interest," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    11. Blasch, Julia & Ohndorf, Markus, 2015. "Altruism, moral norms and social approval: Joint determinants of individual offset behavior," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 251-260.
    12. Carattini, Stefano & Blasch, Julia, 2024. "Nudging when the descriptive norm is low: Evidence from a carbon offsetting field experiment," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    13. Andrea Baranzini & Stefano Carattini, 2017. "Effectiveness, earmarking and labeling: testing the acceptability of carbon taxes with survey data," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 19(1), pages 197-227, January.
    14. Ziegler, Andreas, 2019. "The Relevance of Attitudinal Factors for the Acceptance of Energy Policy Measures: A Micro-econometric Analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 129-140.
    15. Kesternich, Martin & Löschel, Andreas & Römer, Daniel, 2016. "The long-term impact of matching and rebate subsidies when public goods are impure: Field experimental evidence from the carbon offsetting market," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 70-78.
    16. Ewald, Jens & Sterner, Thomas & Sterner, Erik, 2022. "Understanding the resistance to carbon taxes: Drivers and barriers among the general public and fuel-tax protesters," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    17. Andreas Lange & Andreas Ziegler, 2017. "Offsetting Versus Mitigation Activities to Reduce $$\hbox {CO}_{2}$$ CO 2 Emissions: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis for the U.S. and Germany," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 66(1), pages 113-133, January.
    18. Daniel Engler & Gunnar Gutsche & Amantia Simixhiu & Andreas Ziegler, 2021. "Corporate CO2 offsetting in small- and medium-sized firms in Germany," MAGKS Papers on Economics 202136, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    19. Andrea Baranzini & Stefano Carattini & Linda Tesauro, 2021. "Designing Effective and Acceptable Road Pricing Schemes: Evidence from the Geneva Congestion Charge," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 79(3), pages 417-482, July.
    20. Grieder, Manuel & Baerenbold, Rebekka & Schmitz, Jan & Schubert, Renate, 2022. "The Behavioral Effects of Carbon Taxes – Experimental Evidence," VfS Annual Conference 2022 (Basel): Big Data in Economics 264112, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:lsg:lsgwps:wp257. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: The GRI Administration (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/grlseuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.