RIO Country Report 2015: Cyprus

The 2015 series of RIO Country Reports analyse and assess the policy and the national research and innovation system developments in relation to national policy priorities and the EU policy agenda with special focus on ERA and Innovation Union. The executive summaries of these reports put forward the main challenges of the research and innovation systems.JRC.J.6-Innovation Systems Analysi

Do individuals care about fairness in burden sharing for climate change mitigation? Evidence from a lab experiment

One of the reasons for deadlock in global climate policy is countries' disagreement on how to share the mitigation burden. Normative theory suggests various fairness criteria for structuring burden sharing, most prominently, historical responsibility for emissions, economic capacity, and vulnerability to climate change. Governments have taken up these criteria in their rhetoric at UNFCCC negotiations. I examine whether normative criteria influence individual burden sharing preferences. This bottom-up perspective is important for two reasons. First, it is unknown if governments' fairness rhetoric matches citizens' actual preferences. Second, international climate agreements directly affect individuals through domestic policy measures (e.g. energy taxes), and therefore require domestic public support for successful implementation. I conducted two laboratory experiments where participants have to agree on how to share climate change mitigation costs in an ultimatum game. Treatment conditions include differences between proposer and responder in capacity, vulnerability (experiment 1), and historical emissions (experiment 2). Historical emissions are endogenously determined in a prior game. Capacity inequality strongly affects burden sharing, with richer players ending up paying more, and poorer players less. Vulnerability differences reduce the influence of fairness, leading to suggested cost distributions more unfavorable to vulnerable players. However, vulnerable responders still reject many "unfair” offers. Differences in historical responsibility result in cost distributions strongly correlated with players' relative contributions to climate change. The results suggest that more nuanced consideration of fairness criteria in burden sharing could make ambitious climate agreements more acceptable for reluctant countries and their citizens

Do individuals care about fairness in burden sharing for climate change mitigation? Evidence from a lab experiment

One of the reasons for deadlock in global climate policy is countries’ disagreement on how to share the mitigation burden. Normative theory suggests various fairness criteria for structuring burden sharing, most prominently, historical responsibility for emissions, economic capacity, and vulnerability to climate change. Governments have taken up these criteria in their rhetoric at UNFCCC negotiations. I examine whether normative criteria influence individual burden sharing preferences. This bottom-up perspective is important for two reasons. First, it is unknown if governments’ fairness rhetoric matches citizens’ actual preferences. Second, international climate agreements directly affect individuals through domestic policy measures (e.g. energy taxes), and therefore require domestic public support for successful implementation. I conducted two laboratory experiments where participants have to agree on how to share climate change mitigation costs in an ultimatum game. Treatment conditions include differences between proposer and responder in capacity, vulnerability (experiment 1), and historical emissions (experiment 2). Historical emissions are endogenously determined in a prior game. Capacity inequality strongly affects burden sharing, with richer players ending up paying more, and poorer players less. Vulnerability differences reduce the influence of fairness, leading to suggested cost distributions more unfavorable to vulnerable players. However, vulnerable responders still reject many “unfair” offers. Differences in historical responsibility result in cost distributions strongly correlated with players’ relative contributions to climate change. The results suggest that more nuanced consideration of fairness criteria in burden sharing could make ambitious climate agreements more acceptable for reluctant countries and their citizens.ISSN:0165-0009ISSN:1573-148

RIO Country Report 2016: Austria

The 2016 series of the RIO Country Report analyses and assesses the development and performance of the national research and innovation system of the EU-28 Member States and related policies with the aim of monitoring and evaluating the EU policy implementation as well as facilitating policy learning in the Member States.JRC.B.7-Knowledge for Finance, Innovation and Growt

European unilateralism and involuntary burden-sharing in global climate politics: A public opinion perspective from the other side

Powerful political actors in the international system quite frequently adopt unilateral policies whose implications extend beyond their respective borders. Examples include financial market regulation as well as taxation, trade and environmental policies. They do so to avoid lowest common-denominator outcomes in areas where they desire more ambitious international policies, and to motivate or coerce other countries to shoulder a part of the burden associated with problem solving. This article explores whether and how such unilateralism affects public opinion in other countries, arguing that such analysis can point to external constraints on unilateralism and is worthwhile also for normative reasons. Empirically, we examine the effect of a major unilateral European Union (EU) climate policy initiative, which regulates emissions from aircraft, on public opinion in India and the United States, the two largest democracies outside the EU. Based on survey experiments, we study the effects of cost and sovereignty considerations on people's evaluation of the EU's new policy. The results show that both types of concern play a significant role and may act as a constraint on unilateral European climate policy

Obtaining public support for North-South climate funding: Evidence from conjoint experiments in donor countries

The adoption of the Warsaw mechanism on loss and damage has again highlighted the North-South divide in those parts of UNFCCC negotiations dealing with international climate finance. Current estimates put required funding from rich countries at 50–100 billion Euros per year to induce non-Annex I countries to take on greenhouse gas limitation commitments and to assist highly vulnerable countries. Results from survey-embedded conjoint experiments can help policy-makers anticipate opportunities and pitfalls in designing large-scale climate funding schemes. We implemented such experiments in the United States and Germany to better understand what institutional design characteristics are likely to garner more public support for climate funding among citizens in key developed countries. We find that climate funding receives more public support if it flows to efficient governments, funding decisions are made jointly by donor and recipient countries, funding is used both for mitigation and adaptation, and other donor countries contribute a large share. Contrary to what one might expect, climate change damage levels, income, and emissions in/of potential recipient countries have no significant effect on public support. These findings suggest that finance mechanisms that focus purely on compensating developing countries, without contributing to the global public good of mitigation, will find it hard to garner public support

Climate policy in hard times: Are the pessimists right?

Conventional wisdom holds that the state of the economy has a strong impact on citizens' appetite for environmental policies, including climate policy. Assuming median voter preferences prevail, periods of economic prosperity are likely to be conducive, and economic downturns are likely to be detrimental to ambitious climate policy. Using original surveys in the United States and Germany, we engage in a critical re-assessment of this claim. The results show that, for the most part, individuals' perceptions of their own economic situations have no significant effect on their policy support. Negative perceptions of the national economic outlook reduce support for climate policy in the US, but not in Germany. However, the magnitude of this national economy effect in the US is small. On the other hand, individuals' climate risk perceptions consistently have a statistically significant and large effect across various model specifications, and interestingly, this pattern holds for the US, whose government is among the less ambitious in global climate policy, as well as Germany, which is among the frontrunners. Our study indicates that the state of the economy may not trump climate risk considerations as conventional wisdom claims

RIO Country Report 2016: Cyprus

The 2016 series of the RIO Country Report analyses and assesses the development and performance of the national research and innovation system of the EU-28 member States and related policies with the aim of monitoring and evaluating the EU policy implementation as well as facilitating policy learning in the Member States.JRC.B.7-Knowledge for Finance, Innovation and Growt

RIO Country Report 2016: Cyprus

This publication is a Science for Policy report by the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Commission’s science and knowledge service. It aims to provide evidence-based scientific support to the European policymaking process. The scientific output expressed does not imply nor prejudge policy positions of the European Commission. Neither the European Commission nor any person acting on behalf of the Commission is responsible for the use that might be made of this publication