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In the wake of 25 UN Climate Change Conferences of the Parties (and counting), international cooperation on mitigating greenhouse gas emissions to avoid substantial and potentially irreversible climate change remains an important challenge. The limited impact that the Kyoto Protocol and its successor, the Paris Agreement, have had on curbing emissions demonstrate both the dificulties in negotiating ambitious environmental agreements and the reluctance of countries to comply with their agreed emission targets once they have joined the treaty. Therefore, a better understanding of the obstacles and opportunities that the interactions between domestic and international policy pose for the design of successful international climate cooperation is of utmost importance. To shed light on the roots of the stalemate (and suggest possible ways out), this article reviews, and draws lessons from, a growing theoretical, experimental and empirical literature that accounts for the hierarchical interplay between domestic political pressure and international climate policy.

This paper uses replicator dynamics to compare the steady states arising from two types of common property regimes - one in which over-exploiters are punished by the resource users themselves, and another where enforcement is handled by guards who collect a tax from the users. The use of guards requires a less restrictive set of parametric conditions in order to maintain an equilibrium with no over-exploiters. However, it can also stabilize an outcome in which all users over-exploit and are punished, but not enough to induce more cooperation (less resource extraction). These results can be used in guiding and structuring the formation of new common property regimes.

In the wake of 25 UN Climate Change Conferences of the Parties (and counting), international cooperation on mitigating greenhouse gas emissions to avoid substantial and potentially irreversible climate change remains an important challenge. The limited impact that the Kyoto Protocol and its successor, the Paris Agreement, have had on curbing emissions demonstrate both the difficulties in negotiating ambitious environmental agreements and the reluctance of countries to comply with their agreed emission targets once they have joined the treaty. Therefore, a better understanding of the obstacles and opportunities that the interactions between domestic and international policy pose for the design of successful international climate cooperation is of utmost importance. To shed light on the roots of the stalemate (and suggest possible ways out), this article reviews, and draws lessons from, a growing theoretical, experimental and empirical literature that accounts for the hierarchical interplay between domestic political pressure and international climate policy.

"Humans have long neglected to fully consider the impact of their behaviour on the environment. From excessive consumption of fossil fuels and natural resources, to pollution, waste disposal and, in more recent years, climate change, most people and institutions lack a clear understanding of the environmental consequences of their actions. The new field of behavioural environmental economics seeks to address this by applying the framework of behavioural economics to environmental issues, thereby rationalizing unexplained puzzles and providing a more realistic account of individual behaviour. This book provides a complete and rigorous overview of environmental topics which may be addressed and, in many instances, better understood by integrating a behavioural approach. This volume features state-of-the-art research on this topic by influential scholars in behavioural and environmental economics, focusing on the effects of psychological, social and cognitive factors on the decision-making process. It presents research performed using different methods and data collection mechanisms (e.g. laboratory experiments, field experiments, natural experiments, online surveys) on a variety of environmental topics (e.g. sustainability, natural resources). This book is a comprehensive and innovative tool for researchers and students interested in the behavioural economics of the environment and in the design of policy interventions aimed at reducing the human impact on the environment"--

AbstractWith the aid of a lab experiment, we explored how imperfect monitoring and punishment networks impacted appropriation, punishment and beliefs in a common pool resource appropriation dilemma. We studied the differences between the complete network (with perfect monitoring and punishment, in which everyone can observe and punish everyone else) and two 'imperfect' networks (that systematically reduce the number of subjects who could monitor and punish others): the directed and undirected circle networks. We found that free riders were punished in all treatments, but the network topology impacted the type of punishment: the undirected circle induced more severe punishment and prosocial punishment compared to the other two networks. Both imperfect networks were more efficient because the larger punishment capacity available in the complete network elicited higher punishment amount.