Working Papers

Why do many individuals remain in climate-vulnerable areas despite escalating environmental hazards and, for some households, financially feasible relocation options? This study examines the cognitive process of mobility decision-making, surveying residents of two climate-risk-prone regions in Bangladesh. We propose a three-stage framework comprising appraisal & awareness, aspiration & intention, and action to explore how cognitive and emotional considerations relate to im(mobility) preferences. To investigate information processing, we employed a survey design using conflicting but factually correct information (Study 1, N=247). Respondents viewed two videos showing opposing physical narratives based on satellite imagery: one highlighting the risks of sea-level rise (e.g., erosion) requiring migration, and the other highlighting geomorphic resilience (e.g., land accretion) enabling in-situ adaptation. Approximately 40% recommend ignoring one of the two evidence-based messages, consistent with selective information avoidance. In Study 2 (N=385), about one-third reference past investments in their homes and land when evaluating relocation, consistent with sensitivity to sunk costs. Both tendencies appear more pronounced among individuals with strong emotional attachment to place. Across studies, stronger place attachment is associated with a shorter time horizon (less willingness to incur costs now for future safety) and lower confidence in being able to adapt locally. We also find that groups with different stay-or-move profiles differ in their willingness to take risks. Importantly, these differences remain even among households that appear able to afford relocation, suggesting that immobility reflects more than financial constraints alone. Our evidence is correlational (we do not infer cause-and-effect), but it highlights consistent links between place-based ties, selective disengagement from decision-relevant information, and stated preferences to stay or move. These patterns matter because they help explain why providing information or financial support alone may not be sufficient to trigger effective long-term adaptation, and they point to the value of designing support that also addresses perceived feasibility and place-based attachments.

This article outlines an interdisciplinary research agenda in the nexus of climate change, extreme weather, human im/mobility and public health. We identify four research themes. First, climate im/mobility and health narratives, where research is needed on how competing narratives are adopted by citizens and how these influence their attitudes towards climate im/mobile groups, while also giving a stronger voice for these groups to tell their own stories; second, legal and policy frameworks for health and wellbeing of im/mobile groups, where the lack of legal recognition and the rise of anti-migration political and societal movements raise new research questions on how such concepts as climate mobility justice can be effectively deployed to safeguard health and wellbeing of climate im/mobile groups; third, health implications of im/mobility decision-making and action, which calls for integrated research across scales -- from government and community to the individual -- and recognition of wellbeing and ontological security needs among Indigenous people; and, finally, health and care system preparedness, which highlights the need for culturally sensitive health communication in climate disaster contexts and the urgency of determining the health needs of particularly vulnerable groups among displaced populations.

This study evaluates the long-term impacts of the Sofala Carbon Community Project (SCCP) in Mozambique, a Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) program combining asset-building, use-restriction strategies, and development interventions, partially financed through the voluntary carbon market. Using quasi-experimental analysis of remote sensing data, we find that the SCCP reduced tree cover loss by 2.2 percentage points during implementation (2005-2014) and by 2.1 percentage points in the five years after its conclusion (2015-2019), corresponding to 41% and 20% reductions relative to control areas, with no evidence of spatial leakage. Household surveys indicate that 95% of agroforestry systems adopted during the project persisted seven years post-program, and participants report stronger conservation skills, higher perceived efficacy, and improved socio-economic status compared to non-participants. Instrumental variable estimates suggest that SCCP employment increases the likelihood of securing long-term jobs in the neighbouring national park fivefold, highlighting skill and network gains as key mechanisms. Despite these positive outcomes, limited understanding of contractual terms and land tenure arrangements raise equity concerns. The findings show that integrated VCM-financed PES programs can generate durable local environmental and socio-economic benefits but are unlikely to meet mitigation claims without rigorous, empirically validated carbon accounting and resilient financing structures.

Collective risks such as climate change and biodiversity loss require cooperative solutions, yet individuals overwhelmingly choose sub-optimal individual protection. Both selfishness and strategic uncertainty - doubt about whether others will cooperate - serve as explanations for this behavior. We disentangle these barriers to cooperation in a pre-registered experiment (N=400) using a collective risk social dilemma where some individuals in a group depend on others for protection. Artificially removing strategic uncertainty from the decision environment increases collective protection from 11% to 48%, reduces resources wasted by 73%, and lowers within-group inequality by 76%. We demonstrate the policy implications by testing institutions specifically designed to alleviate (but not fully eliminate) strategic uncertainty through transfer payments in the spirit of payments for ecosystem services. These institutions foster collective protection, social welfare, and reduce inequality similarly as removing strategic uncertainty by design, pointing to their potential.

Disasters are often assumed to unite communities, yet evidence is mixed. Using panel data from the Philippines spanning a decade (2012, 2016, 2022), we examine how Typhoon Haiyan exposure shaped prosocial behavior measured through incentivized economic games. We find a nonlinear relationship: solidarity erodes in moderately affected communities, falling below both minimally and severely damaged areas where bonds remain strong. This pattern persists nearly a decade post-disaster and is most pronounced among more vulnerable households. A lab-in-the-field experiment demonstrates that solidarity declines when multiple potential helpers exist and need is ambiguous, consistent with diffusion of responsibility. Field data show that moderately exposed communities exhibit the highest ambiguity about legitimate aid needs, and severely affected households in these zones report the lowest aid satisfaction. These findings reveal that uneven disaster impacts can erode social cohesion and highlight the need for transparent, equitable aid distribution to sustain community resilience.

Democratic governance of shared natural resources is increasingly promoted through conditional payments in development and conservation programs. Whether such payments genuinely promote democratic decision-making or merely incentivize its appearance is an open empirical question with important implications for environmental governance. We conduct a lab-in-the-field experiment with 64 local leaders (32 traditional authorities and 32 elected Water Point Committee chairpersons) and 384 villagers across 32 villages in rural Namibia. Leaders choose among three procedural rules for allocating a collective fund: democracy (binding vote), pseudo-democracy (vote held but leader decides), and autocracy (leader decides unilaterally). We introduce bonus payments conditional on allowing for a vote. This parallels real-world conditionality where external actors can observe democratic procedures but not their substance. We find that payments do not significantly increase genuine democratic governance. Instead, payments significantly reduce autocratic choices, with a corresponding marginal significant increase in pseudo-democratic choices, where leaders adopt the appearance of democratic process without its substance. Exploratory heterogeneous effects suggest that payments may crowd out democratic behavior among leaders who chose democracy at baseline, while drawing baseline autocrats towards genuine democratic procedures. Our findings caution that process-conditional payments in environmental governance may generate symbolic compliance, with heterogeneous effects depending on leaders' pre-existing governance behavior.

Efforts to adapt to climate change often highlight consequences for future generations, yet such framings might overwhelm communities if they doubt their capacity to act in the present. We evaluate whether an experiential learning intervention combining an intergenerationally framed economic game with a participatory visioning workshop can enhance perceived behavioral control and related determinants of climate adaptation. In 26 rural communities in Namibia's Zambezi region, participants (n=520) played a game simulating resource trade-offs between current and future generations, followed by facilitated discussions on long-term adaptation strategies. A randomly selected subsample (n=290) completed surveys at different points in the workshop day: before the intervention (n=97), after the game but before the debriefing/workshop (n=95), or after all components (n=98). We re-interviewed surveyed participants by phone eight months later (n=248). We find that the intervention increased self-efficacy and demand for climate-related information in the short run. While concern for future generations was already high, the intervention broadened participants' normative focus to include both current and future generations. At eight-month follow-up, initial gains in self-efficacy had faded, though information-seeking and perceived adaptation costs had risen. Community-level documentation reveals that some participants further worked on their adaptation prototypes they developed during the workshop, though many faced organizational and technical barriers. Our findings suggest that brief experiential interventions can shift key cognitive and motivational drivers of adaptation, particularly among marginalized groups, but sustaining these effects likely requires ongoing institutional support and clear pathways to action.

Climate adaptation requires institutions that can adjust when ecological conditions change. Community autonomy is often assumed to foster resilience, yet our longitudinal field evidence from self-governed marine protected areas shows persistent monitoring challenges and little rule revision over time. To identify the behavioral sources of this inertia, we conducted a framed field experiment with 420 Filipino small-scale fishers that varies the scope of local rule-making authority and then introduces a simulated climate shock. Greater autonomy increases perceived legitimacy, but it also encourages groups to adopt fragile institutions based on trust or with rules but no effective monitoring. These arrangements then become difficult to revise, and high-autonomy groups fail to adapt when conditions worsen, resulting in poorer ecological outcomes than groups under more constrained institutional choice. The findings show that autonomy can legitimize fragile institutions and lock them in, weakening adaptive capacity. Effective decentralization should therefore be paired with structured guidance and decision supports that reduce complexity and make robust, enforceable rules easier to select and revise.

Climate change is expected to drive cross-border migration, yet how framing shapes public support for climate migrants remains unclear. We conducted survey experiments in Germany (N=950) and Aotearoa New Zealand (N=694) to test how narrative framing -- specifically migration causality (climate-only versus multi-causal) and migrant adaptation efforts -- influences acceptance of migrants from Bangladesh and Tuvalu. Contrary to intuition, providing multi-causal explanations did not lead to increased support; instead, it enabled respondents to de-emphasize climate as a driver, reducing perceived responsibility for providing support. Information about local adaptation efforts increased acceptance only in simplified climate narratives. An immersive perspective-taking intervention in Germany reduced this selective attribution. These findings show that complex narratives reflecting the lived experiences of affected communities may undermine support among some audiences by enabling selective interpretation, posing challenges for climate migration communications. Approaches involving active myth-busting, co-designing narratives with affected communities, and innovative formats such as science slams hold promise for bridging scientific accuracy and public engagement.

Unprecedented loss of biodiversity and zoonotic disease outbreaks threaten human and planetary well-being. The consumption of wild meat lies at the intersection of these interrelated risks, yet supply-side interventions in informal markets remain understudied. We provide evidence that voluntary payment contracts to wild meat vendors in the spirit of payments for ecosystem services (PES) can reduce wild meat reliance. Our study combines a baseline survey with 433 informal restaurant owners in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire that informed randomized field experiments involving 56 of those restaurants, with an online survey of 2,131 Europeans across 24 countries who may help fund the contracts via donation calls. All participating restaurant owners received financial training and were randomly assigned to a control group (display information poster) or a treatment group (poster plus monetary compensation for a four-week ban of wild meat sales). In addition to the 4-weeks intervention phase, we collect data for 2 weeks pre- and post-intervention, and extensive baseline and endline questionnaires to comprehensively evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. Treatment restaurants achieved 98% compliance (verified by mystery shoppers) and reduced wild meat sales to 0.3 dishes per day, collectively avoiding 1.9 tons of wild meat sales. Notably, the financial performance of restaurants was stable, even without the compensation payments, by substituting wild meat for other dishes. Importantly, we observe no evidence of spillovers onto control restaurants, and 50% of the treatment effect was sustained two weeks after payments ended. The survey of European donors shows substantial willingness to financially support our program, with 71% of participants sacrificing on average 50% of their resources in donations. Together, these results show that voluntary PES-style incentives may offer a scalable and financially sustainable mechanism to reduce pressure on wildlife and lower zoonotic disease risks from informal urban markets, ultimately improving upon planetary health.