Abstract
Agents’ decision whether to join a group, and their subsequent contribution to a public good, depend on the group’s ideals. Agents have different preference for this public good, e.g. reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. People who become “climate insiders” obtain identity utility, but suffer disutility if they deviate from the group ideal. That ideal might create a wide but shallow group, having many members but little effect on behavior, or a narrow but deep group. Greater heterogeneity of preferences causes the contribution-maximizing ideal to create narrow but deep groups. The contribution-maximizing ideal maximizes welfare if the population is large.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 617-664 |
| Number of pages | 48 |
| Journal | Social Choice and Welfare |
| Volume | 57 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| Early online date | 12 Apr 2021 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Oct 2021 |
Bibliographical note
We thank the editor, an associate editor, two anonymous reviewers, Roland Bénabou, Parkash Chander, In-Koo Cho and conference and seminar participants in the 2016 EAERE Conference (Zurich), the 2017 AERE Conference (Pittsburgh), the 2018 PET Conference (Hue), Arne Ryde Workshop on Identity, Image and Economic Behavior (Lund), NTU Workshop on Environmental Economics, 4th Hanyang-Kobe-NTU Symposium in Economics, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Kobe University, National University of Singapore, Peking University HSBC Business School, Renmin University of China, SUFE International Workshop on “Frontiers of Environmental and Resource Economics” (Shanghai), Tsinghua University, University of Groningen, Xi’an Jiao Tong University, and Xiamen University for helpful comments.Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.
