Venice Workshop: Private vs. Public Solutions to Collective Action Problems

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Collective action problems emerge when individual incentives and group interests are misaligned, as in the case of climate change. Individuals facing collective action problems are often considered to have two options: contribute towards a public solution or free-ride. But they might also choose a third option of investing in a private solution such as local climate change adaptation6–8. Experimental research on the dynamics of collective action problems featuring private solutions has been conducted only in single-country contexts, thereby lacking generalisability. Here we introduce an experimental collective action problem featuring wealth inequality, public and private solutions, and participants from 34 countries. In this presentation, I talked about results from a hierarchical clustering analysis on relevant variables in our dataset.