Signals of Scientific and Social Consensus Matter Most for Motivating Public Response to Climate Change, Even If Government and Industry Oppose (Anandita Sabherwal, PhD)
When facing real-world societal challenges such as climate change, people make decisions about how to act based on multiple, often conflicting messages from various influential stakeholders such as governments, scientists, fellow citizens, and private stakeholders. How does the public decide to act amidst potentially converging or diverging signals from multiple influential entities in society? Which entities remain influential even if other groups appear apathetic or stand in opposition? In two conjoint experiments spanning over 40,000 evaluations, one behavioral experiment and a digital field study (Ns = 1,515, 2,005, 1,604, 50,668 respectively; all pre-registered), we show the relative and combined influence of government bodies, scientific experts, industry stakeholders, and social consensus in the general public in driving responses to environmental issues. Across issues, support from scientists and social consensus was most influential in shaping the American public’s policy support, product preferences, donations to a cause, and social media engagement. And when facing opposition from government and industry, combined, but not isolated, support from scientists and social consensus reliably mobilized action. This work suggests that even amidst rising opposition from governments and industry to solving climate change, scientists and the public can come together to mobilize action.
Negotiators Facing Externalities: Conflict Resolution Across Economic and Ecological Interests (Marco Schauer, PhD)
Organisational and political stakeholders must constantly resolve conflicting interests through joint decision-making processes like negotiations. These conflicts are not limited to divergent economic interests but encompass ecological and social interests of external parties as well. However, the conflict management literature has predominantly investigated how negotiators may maximise their economic interests, omitting social or ecological externalities. Using a newly developed interactive and incentivised negotiation paradigm that operationalises both negotiation parties’ economic as well as external parties’ ecological interests, we investigate how negotiators balance their economic conflict at the negotiation table, with the multi-dimensional conflict with external parties. Specifically, we test whether the complexity of the decision-task leads negotiators to prioritise their conflict resolution with a counterpart, at the expense of externalities. In addition, we test an intervention aimed at facilitating sustainability conflict resolution. Throughout all four studies, we find that negotiators reach inefficient agreements that miss out on opportunities to create equal economic profits while causing lower ecological harm. Task complexity exacerbated this effect. Providing negotiators with ecological limits did improve sustainable conflict resolution, but ecological tipping points were nevertheless exceeded. We are looking forward to discussing how to refine the novel paradigm and design effective joint decision-making interventions.Organisational and political stakeholders must constantly resolve conflicting interests through joint decision-making processes like negotiations. These conflicts are not limited to divergent economic interests but encompass ecological and social interests of external parties as well. However, the conflict management literature has predominantly investigated how negotiators may maximise their economic interests, omitting social or ecological externalities. Using a newly developed interactive and incentivised negotiation paradigm that operationalises both negotiation parties’ economic as well as external parties’ ecological interests, we investigate how negotiators balance their economic conflict at the negotiation table, with the multi-dimensional conflict with external parties. Specifically, we test whether the complexity of the decision-task leads negotiators to prioritise their conflict resolution with a counterpart, at the expense of externalities. In addition, we test an intervention aimed at facilitating sustainability conflict resolution. Throughout all four studies, we find that negotiators reach inefficient agreements that miss out on opportunities to create equal economic profits while causing lower ecological harm. Task complexity exacerbated this effect. Providing negotiators with ecological limits did improve sustainable conflict resolution, but ecological tipping points were nevertheless exceeded. We are looking forward to discussing how to refine the novel paradigm and design effective joint decision-making interventions.
