ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the impacts of inequality-averse attitudes on the individual incentives of participating in international environmental agreements using a laboratory experiment. When the subjects had strong inequality-averse attitudes, then the critical players might have had the incentive to break the coalition internally. In particular, cross-boundary environmental issues are usually so complex and so widespread that they require collaboration between states. In this respect, international environmental agreements (IEAs) are constructed to regulate and manage the current situation. Egalitarian signatories could punish free-rider behaviour by turning down a profitable IEA. In other words, the effects of inequality-aversion could shape the stability and the formation of IEAs both internally and externally. The experiment was conducted at the Centre for Experimental Economics (EXEC) laboratory at the University of York (UK) and programmed with z-Tree. Fifty subjects were invited through the Online Recruitment System (ORSEE). They were students from different countries and studied various disciplines.
