| 1. |
- Brühl, Johanna, et al.
(författare)
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Decision-Making in a Water Crisis: Lessons From the Cape Town Drought for Urban Water Policy
- 2020
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Ingår i: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Science.
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- The water crisis that gripped Cape Town over the 2016–2018 period gained global attention. For a brief period of time in early 2018, it looked as if the legislative capital of South Africa would become the first major city in the world to run out of water. The case of Cape Town has broad implications for how we think about water management in a rapidly urbanizing world. Cities in the global South, especially, where often under-capacitated urban utilities need to cope with rapid demographic changes, climate change, and numerous competing demands on their tight budgets, can learn from Cape Town’s experience. The case of Cape Town draws attention to the types of decisions policymakers and water utilities face in times of crisis. It illustrates how these decisions, while being unavoidable in the short term, are often sub-optimal in the long run. The Cape Town drought highlights the importance of infrastructure diversification, better groundwater management, and communication and information transparency to build trust with the public. It also shows what governance and institutional changes need to be made to ensure long-term water security and efficient water management. The implementation of all of these policies needs to address the increased variability of water supplies due to increasingly erratic rainfall and rapidly growing urban populations in many countries. This necessitates a long-term planning horizon.
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| 2. |
- Hasson, Reviva, et al.
(författare)
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Climate Change in a Public Goods Game: Investment Decision in Mitigation versus Adaptation
- 2009
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We use behavioral and experimental economics to study a particular aspect of the economics of climate change: the potential tradeoff between countries’ investments in mitigation versus adaptation. While mitigation of greenhouse gases can be viewed as a public good, adaptation to climate change is a private good, benefiting only the country or the individual that invests in adaptation. We use a one-shot public-goods game that deviates from the standard public-goods game by introducing a stochastic term to account for probabilistic destruction in a climate-change setting. Probability density function is mapped to within-group levels of mitigation. We compare low-vulnerability and high-vulnerability treatments by varying the magnitude of disaster across treatments. Our results show that there is no significant difference in the level of mitigation across these treatments. Further, our results emphasize the important role of trust in enhancing cooperation.
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| 3. |
- Hasson, R, et al.
(författare)
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Treatment Effects of Climate Change Risk on Mitigation and Adaptation Behavior in an Experimental Setting
- 2012
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Ingår i: South African Journal of Economics. - 0038-2280. ; 80:3, s. 415-430
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper explores the collective action problem as it relates to climate change and develops two models that capture the mitigation–adaptation trade-off. The first model presents climate change as a disaster that will occur with certainty, and where both mitigation and adaptation reduce the size of the loss associated with the disaster (the so-called deterministic model). The second model presents climate change as an uncertain event, where mitigation affects the probability of disaster while adaptation again reduces the size of the loss (this is the so-called stochastic model). Comparing the two models in a one-shot public goods experiment with students, we find no significant differences in subjects' choice to mitigate. The experiments also reveal a relatively low rate of mitigation for both models compared with earlier studies.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Kocher, Martin G., et al.
(författare)
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Does stake size matter for cooperation and punishment?
- 2008
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Ingår i: Economics Letters. - : Elsevier BV. - 0165-1765. ; 99:3, s. 508-511
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The effects of stake size on cooperation and punishment are investigated using a public goods experiment. We find that an increase in stake size does neither significantly affect cooperation nor the level of punishment.
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| 6. |
- Kocher, Martin G., et al.
(författare)
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Social Background, Cooperative Behavior, and Norm Enforcement
- 2009
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Studies have shown that there are differences in cooperative behavior across countries. Furthermore, differences in the use and the reaction on the introduction of a norm enforcement mechansism have been documented in cross-cultural studies, recently. We present data which prove that stark differences in both dimensions can exist even within the same town. For this end, a unique data set was created, based on public goods experiments conducted in South Africa. Most of the group differences can, however, be explained by variables accounting for social capital and social environment, such as trust or household violence.
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| 7. |
- Kocher, Martin G., et al.
(författare)
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Social background, cooperative behavior and norm-enforcement
- 2012
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Ingår i: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. - 0167-2681. ; 81:2, s. 341-354
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Studies have shown that there are differences in cooperative behavior across countries. Furthermore, differences in the use and the reaction on the introduction of a norm enforcement mechanism have been documented in cross-cultural studies, recently. We present data which prove that stark differences in both dimensions can exist even within the same town. For this end, a unique data set was created, based on public goods experiments conducted in Cape Town, South Africa. Most of the differences in behavior can, however, be explained by variables accounting for social capital and social environment, such as trust or household violence.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Sterner, Thomas, 1952, et al.
(författare)
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Capacity Building to Deal With Climate Challenges Today and in the Future
- 2012
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Ingår i: Journal of Environment & Development. - 1070-4965. ; 21:1, s. 71-75
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Climate change represents a serious threat to the economic growth potential in low income countries. Instead of investing in growth, they may be drawn into strife and conflict. Climate change and the global politics to deal with it, could however also present a number of interesting opportunities for developing countries. Such opportunities may arise in sustainable forestry, new forms of solar, wind or bioenergy and related industries, agriculture or in the programs for abatement and mitigation that are likely to be created. It is an important priority for low-income countries to develop local knowledge and understanding concerning climate change in order to better prepare for both the costs and challenges posed by climate change, as well as to defend their national interests and participate in international negotiations. Creating academic capacity is however a long and painstaking process. We discuss a number of existing initiatives but conclude that more is needed, particularly at the higher level of PhD studies.
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| 10. |
- Visser, Martine, 1971, et al.
(författare)
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Bridging the Great Divide in South Africa: Inequality and Punishment in the Provision of Public Goods
- 2006
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We explore the effect of income inequality and peer punishment on voluntary provision of public goods in an experimental context. Our sample draws from nine fishing communities in South-Africa where high levels of inequality prevail. We find that aggregate cooperation is higher in both the voluntary contribution mechanism (VCM) and punishment treatments for unequal groups. Once peer sanctioning is introduced over-contribution by low relative to high endowment players observed in the VCM treatment is significantly enhanced. Demand for punishment by low and high endowment players are similar, irrespective of differences in relative costs, and in unequal groups free-riding is punished more, specifically by low endowment players. We observe inequality aversion both in endowments and with respect to the interaction of endowments and contributions: high endowment players receive more punishment, but also receive more punishment for negative deviation from the group mean share.
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