Leading by Example to Protect the Environment: Do the Costs of Leading Matter?

Environmentalists often urge their home countries to take a leading role in reducing global environmental problems like climate change. A pertinent question is, Will examples set by leading nations influence others to follow suit, and if so, do the costs of leading matter? For instance, will costly...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of conflict resolution 2013-04, Vol.57 (2), p.307-326
Main Authors: Van der Heijden, Eline, Moxnes, Erling
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Carbon emissions
Climate Change
Conflict resolution
Cost efficiency
Costs
Environmental Degradation
Environmental impact studies
Environmental protection
Environmentalists
Experiment design
Experiments
Investment strategies
Leadership
Public goods
Public investments
Return on investment
Securities sales
Social psychology
Studies
Citations: Items that this one cites
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Summary:Environmentalists often urge their home countries to take a leading role in reducing global environmental problems like climate change. A pertinent question is, Will examples set by leading nations influence others to follow suit, and if so, do the costs of leading matter? For instance, will costly domestic reductions have a stronger effect on followers than purchases of cheap emission permits abroad? To investigate these questions, we have conducted two treatments in a public bad experiment in which leaders have different costs of leading. Our findings suggest that higher costs of leading lead to stronger effects of a given leader example. Randomly chosen leaders lead by example and set better examples if it is less costly to do so. Finally, there seems to be a limit to the leader effect and it may decrease over time.
ISSN:0022-0027
1552-8766
DOI:10.1177/0022002712445971