Climate Change and Individual Behavior

This paper studies the causal effect of providing information about climate change on individuals' willingness to pay to offset CO2 emissions in a randomized control trial. Individuals that receive truthful information aboutways to reduce CO2 emissions increase their willingness to pay for CO2 offsetting relative to the control group in a within individual research design. Individuals receiving information about the behavior of peers react similarly to those receiving information about scientific research. Individuals' responses vary depending on their sociodemographic characteristics and also along a rich set of attitudes and concerns regarding climate change. In a follow up survey, we study the endogenous information acquisition of survey participants and show that individuals choose information that aligns with their prior beliefs. Individuals who choose to receive information about climate change have a higher willingness to to pay.