Philipp Schoenegger , Kian Mintz-Woo

Geoengineering (especially solar radiation management) may help
to reduce the negative outcomes of climate change by minimising or
reversing global warming. However, many express the worry that
geoengineering may pose a moral hazard, i.e., that information about
geoengineering may lead to a reduction in climate change mitigation
efforts. In this paper, we report a large-scale pre-registered, moneyincentivised,
online experiment with a representative US sample
(N=2500). We compare actual behaviour (donations to climate
change charities and clicks on climate change petition links) as well
as stated preferences (support for a carbon tax and self-reported
intentions to reduce emissions) between participants who receive
information about geoengineering with two control groups (a
salience control that shows information about climate change
generally and a content control that shows information about a
different topic). Behavioural choices are made with an earned
endowment, and stated preference responses are incentivised via the
Bayesian Truth Serum. We fail to find a significant impact of
receiving information about geoengineering, and based on
equivalence tests, we provide evidence in favour of the absence of
such an effect. We take this to provide evidence for the claim that
there is no moral hazard in this context.