Can climate accords based on decentralized and voluntary agreements successfully reduce carbon emissions? We designed an economic experiment to study the effectiveness of the best-known mechanisms to foster international cooperation on climate change mitigation: climate pledges, financial penalties, and peer evaluation. We test each mechanism both separately and together. In the climate pledge treatments, participants could pledge their desired emissions target, approved by majority vote. In the treatments with financial penalties, failure to meet pledges triggered monetary sanctions. In the peer evaluation treatments, participants could evaluate each other, which determined who would receive an additional nonmonetary environmental prize. We find that most participants joined climate agreements and met their pledges, but pledges were insufficiently ambitious. As a result, neither pledges, financial penalties, nor peer evaluation reduced emissions. These results question the effectiveness of decentralized and voluntary climate agreements, such as the Paris Agreement.

中文翻译：

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分散的自愿协议不会在气候变化实验中减少排放


基于分散和自愿协议的气候协议能否成功减少碳排放？我们设计了一项经济实验，以研究促进减缓气候变化国际合作的最知名机制的有效性：气候承诺、经济处罚和同行评估。我们单独或一起测试每种机制。在气候承诺处理中，参与者可以承诺他们想要的排放目标，并得到多数票的批准。在经济处罚的处理中，未能兑现承诺会触发金钱制裁。在同行评估处理中，参与者可以相互评估，从而决定谁将获得额外的非货币环境奖励。我们发现，大多数参与者都加入了气候协议并兑现了他们的承诺，但承诺的雄心不够。因此，无论是承诺、经济处罚还是同行评估都没有减少排放。这些结果质疑了《巴黎协定》等分散式和自愿性气候协议的有效性。