POLS 332: Climate Change: Policy and Politics - A Peer Review of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio

This benchmark portfolio i) provides and overview learning objectives of and pedagogical techniques used in POLS 332 Climate Change: Policy and Politics; and ii) assesses student learning in the course. The course is an upper-level undergraduate course designed to provide students with the ability to follow and actively participate in current climate change policy debates. The course seeks to leave students well versed in both domestic and international policy settings, to provide them with the ability to identify critical assumptions that can alter policy outcomes, and to bestow students with significant understanding of current climate policy. The course is inter-disciplinary in nature (political science, economics, climatology) and attracts students of various majors. The portfolio relies on student evaluations and summative assessments to evaluate general student learning. In addition, the portfolio will provide more in-depth assessment of teaching effectiveness with respect to a single course learning objective based on pre-test surveys and qualitative assessment of essay responses. Overall, students perform well relative learning objectives and consider group discussions and activities particularly beneficial to their learning. Finally, the portfolio reflects on future course improvements

Wealth and risk heterogeneity effects in community-based wildlife management: Experimental evidence

1. Community-based conservation is a widely adopted wildlife governance approach, but questions remain about the conditions under which this form of wildlife governance achieves success. Particularly, participating communities are often marked by considerable wealth and risk heterogeneities that are driven by differences in livestock or agricultural holdings and varying exposure to wildlife depredation of those holdings. 2. The effect of these types of heterogeneity on successful conservation collective action is understudied, particularly in the case of risk heterogeneity. This lacuna limits policymakers\u27 ability to effectively match the design of community-based programs to their particular settings. 3. Using established behavioural experimental techniques, we model the incentive structures underlying community-based wildlife conservation where actors differ in wealth and exposure to human–wildlife conflict. We conduct a modified binary linear voluntary contribution mechanism game, in which we vary subject endowments and risk of incurring a loss when participating in collective action and we find that the type of heterogeneity matters to collective action success. 4. On their own, the presence of either economic or risk heterogeneities (but not both) dampen cooperation compared with homogeneous groups, as do ‘balanced’ distributions of both heterogeneities (where individuals facing high risk levels receive high endowments and vice versa). However, groups with ‘unbalanced’ heterogeneities (where those facing high risk levels receive low endowments and vice versa) demonstrate cooperation at similar levels to that of homogeneous groups. 5. At the individual level, risk drives cooperative behaviour, although its impact is influenced by relative wealth levels when both forms of heterogeneity are present. 6. These findings suggest the need for a more in-depth look at the role and interaction of risk and wealth heterogeneities in conservation management

POLS 332: Climate Change: Policy and Politics - A Peer Review of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio

This benchmark portfolio i) provides and overview learning objectives of and pedagogical techniques used in POLS 332 Climate Change: Policy and Politics; and ii) assesses student learning in the course. The course is an upper-level undergraduate course designed to provide students with the ability to follow and actively participate in current climate change policy debates. The course seeks to leave students well versed in both domestic and international policy settings, to provide them with the ability to identify critical assumptions that can alter policy outcomes, and to bestow students with significant understanding of current climate policy. The course is inter-disciplinary in nature (political science, economics, climatology) and attracts students of various majors. The portfolio relies on student evaluations and summative assessments to evaluate general student learning. In addition, the portfolio will provide more in-depth assessment of teaching effectiveness with respect to a single course learning objective based on pre-test surveys and qualitative assessment of essay responses. Overall, students perform well relative learning objectives and consider group discussions and activities particularly beneficial to their learning. Finally, the portfolio reflects on future course improvements

Voluntary disclosure of contributions: an experimental study on nonmandatory approaches for improving public good provision

There has been an increasing interest in nonpecuniary measures to encourage prosocial behavior. Among these is the use of social comparison, or social information. Although successful in promoting, for instance, greater resource conservation, studies of this measure have so far relied on the assumption of the availability of social information. In situations in which information is costly to collect and disseminate, alternative mechanisms must be considered. This study explores the use of voluntary disclosure to provide social information in a linear public goods game in a lab experiment. It finds that individuals tend to disclose their contribution information when given the option, suggesting that voluntarily disclosed social information remains a possible policy option when the cost of information collection is high. In addition, voluntarily revealed contributions are significantly higher than contributions under mandated disclosure, leading to greater cooperation in the voluntary disclosure treatments under certain circumstances. Finally, evidence is provided that voluntary disclosure may be helpful in attenuating the boomerang effect, i.e., when high contributors reduce their contributions in response to social information

Marginal Benefit and Cost Heterogeneity Data

Data (*.DTA), cleaning and analysis script (*.DO), and codebook (*.XLSX) for the economic experiments first described in Kreitmair and Bower-Bir (2021).Data, cleaning and analysis script, and codebook for the experiments first described in Kreitmair and Bower-Bir (2021), "Too Different to Solve Climate Change? Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Production and Benefit Heterogeneity on Collective Action", Ecological Economics. That paper tests for the effects of two heterogeneities---benefit and production---in a linear public goods setting, allowing the identification of different drivers of cooperative behavior

Use vs. Production Clustering

This paper contains the code used to cluster experimental subjects in Kreitmair and Bower-Bir (2021)

Information Networks and Their Role in Threshold Public Goods Games: An Experimental Study

In this study, we employ laboratory economic experiments to explore the role information networks play in the collective provision of threshold or provision point public goods. Threshold public goods are those for which a target or threshold level of funds must be raised to make provision possible or economically viable. Many public goods exhibit this characteristic as they may only be provided in discrete quantities. Thresholds or provision points are particularly relevant to environmental public goods, given non-linear ecological processes. In a broader context, the study of contribution behavior for threshold public goods also provides valuable insights into fundraising activities of both national and local profit and not-for-profit agencies, which typically involve provision points. On the basis of a 2x2 full factorial treatment design we test the following hypotheses: 1) Given LOW endowments, localized information will be less effective than full contribution information in meeting the provision point. 2) Given HIGH endowments local information will be as effective as full information to meet the threshold contribution level. 3) In cases where the threshold is met, group members are more likely to make identical contributions in the COMPLETE treatments than in the LOCAL treatments