IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rco/dpaper/478.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Public Appeals and Collective Crisis Mitigation

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Haan

    (DIW Berlin, FU Berlin)

  • Lea Heursen

    (HU Berlin)

  • Jule Specht

    (HU Berlin)

  • Bruno Veltri

    (HU Berlin)

  • Georg Weizsäcker

    (HU Berlin)

Abstract

Arrivals of crises often trigger public appeals by policy leaders, attempting to motivate crisis-mitigating behaviors. We run a controlled experiment among a general-population sample to investigate the impact of such appeals and of their tonality. Varying the language, an identical content of the appeal—a plea to contribute to mitigating a crisis—is formulated with either positive or negative wordings. Relative to the case with no appeal, both types of appeals successfully raise contributions, each by about 20 percent. A separate sample of policy-makers is presented with our design and asked to estimate the effect of the appeals. They correctly predict the effect of the positively worded appeal but fail to predict the effect of the negatively worded one.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Haan & Lea Heursen & Jule Specht & Bruno Veltri & Georg Weizsäcker, 2023. "Public Appeals and Collective Crisis Mitigation," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 478, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    • Handle: RePEc:rco:dpaper:478
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://rationality-and-competition.de/wp-content/uploads/discussion_paper/478.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. R. Mark Isaac & James M. Walker, 1988. "Group Size Effects in Public Goods Provision: The Voluntary Contributions Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 103(1), pages 179-199.
    2. Heursen, Lea & Ranehill, Eva & Weber, Roberto A, 2020. "Are women less effective leaders than men? Evidence from experiments using coordination games," Working Papers in Economics 796, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    3. Tavoni, Alessandro & Dannenberg, Astrid & Kallis, Giorgos & Löschel, Andreas, 2011. "Inequality, communication and the avoidance of disastrous climate change," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 37570, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Sonnemans, Joep & Schram, Arthur & Offerman, Theo, 1998. "Public good provision and public bad prevention: The effect of framing," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 143-161, January.
    5. Weimann, Joachim & Brosig-Koch, Jeannette & Heinrich, Timo & Hennig-Schmidt, Heike & Keser, Claudia, 2019. "Public good provision by large groups – the logic of collective action revisited," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 348-363.
    6. Palfrey, Thomas & Rosenthal, Howard & Roy, Nilanjan, 2017. "How cheap talk enhances efficiency in threshold public goods games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 234-259.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kreitmair, Ursula & Bower-Bir, Jacob, 2021. "Too different to solve climate change? Experimental evidence on the effects of production and benefit heterogeneity on collective action," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    2. Weimann, Joachim & Brosig-Koch, Jeannette & Heinrich, Timo & Hennig-Schmidt, Heike & Keser, Claudia, 2022. "CO2 Emission reduction – Real public good provision by large groups in the laboratory," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 1076-1089.
    3. Ye-Feng Chen & Shu-Guang Jiang & Marie Claire Villeval, 2015. "The Tragedy of Corruption. Corruption as a social dilemma," Working Papers 1531, Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon.
    4. Bouma, J.A. & Nguyen, Binh & van der Heijden, Eline & Dijk, J.J., 2018. "Analysing Group Contract Design Using a Lab and a Lab-in-the-Field Threshold Public Good Experiment," Discussion Paper 2018-049, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    5. Ginzburg, Boris & Guerra, José-Alberto & Lekfuangfu, Warn N., 2023. "Critical Mass in Collective Action," MPRA Paper 117139, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Colasante, Annarita, 2017. "Selection of the distributional rule as an alternative tool to foster cooperation in a Public Good Game," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 468(C), pages 482-492.
    7. Valentina Bosetti & Melanie Heugues & Alessandro Tavoni, 2017. "Luring others into climate action: coalition formation games with threshold and spillover effects," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 69(2), pages 410-431.
    8. Calzolari, Giacomo & Casari, Marco & Ghidoni, Riccardo, 2018. "Carbon is forever: A climate change experiment on cooperation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 169-184.
    9. Tisserand, Jean-Christian & Hopfensitz, Astrid & Blondel, Serge & Loheac, Youenn & Mantilla, César & Mateu, Guillermo & Rosaz, Julie & Rozan, Anne & Willinger, Marc & Sutan, Angela, 2022. "Management of common pool resources in a nation-wide experiment," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 201(C).
    10. Shuguang Jiang & Marie Claire Villeval, 2024. "Dishonesty as a collective‐risk social dilemma," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 62(1), pages 223-241, January.
    11. Cloos, Janis & Greiff, Matthias, 2021. "Combating climate change: Is the option to exploit a public good a barrier for reaching critical thresholds? Experimental evidence," MPRA Paper 107144, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Turpie, Jane & Letley, Gwyneth, 2021. "Would community conservation initiatives benefit from external financial oversight? A framed field experiment in Namibia’s communal conservancies," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    13. Matteo M. Marini & Aurora García-Gallego & Luca Corazzini, 2018. "Communication in a threshold public goods game with ambiguity: Anomalies and regularities," Working Papers 2018/03, Economics Department, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón (Spain).
    14. Cieslik, Katarzyna & Cecchi, Francesco & Assefa Damtew, Elias & Tafesse, Shiferaw & Struik, Paul C. & Lemaga, Berga & Leeuwis, Cees, 2021. "The role of ICT in collective management of public bads: The case of potato late blight in Ethiopia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    15. Klaudijo Klaser & Lorenzo Sacconi & Marco Faillo, 2021. "John Rawls and compliance to climate change agreements: insights from a laboratory experiment," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 531-551, September.
    16. Park, Eun-Soo, 2000. "Warm-glow versus cold-prickle: a further experimental study of framing effects on free-riding," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 43(4), pages 405-421, December.
    17. Chen, Yefeng & Jiang, Shuguang & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2016. "The Tragedy of Corruption," IZA Discussion Papers 10175, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Morgan, Stephen N. & Mason, Nicole M. & Shupp, Robert S., 2019. "The effects of voice with(out) punishment: Public goods provision and rule compliance," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    19. Elmar A. Janssen, 2014. "The Influence of Transparency on Investments in Climate Protecting - An Economic Experiment," Working Papers Dissertations 06, Paderborn University, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics.
    20. Goeschl, Timo & Kettner, Sara Elisa & Lohse, Johannes & Schwieren, Christiane, 2015. "What do we learn from public good games about voluntary climate action? Evidence from an artefactual field experiment," Working Papers 0595, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rco:dpaper:478. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Viviana Lalli (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://rationality-and-competition.de .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.