Preferences for prosocial interventions and their role for the formation of institutions and cooperation

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Astrid Dannenberg
• Subject Area: Economic Policy, Applied Economics
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 579645021

The destruction of the world’s natural resources is no longer due to ignorance but the inability of governments to enforce the measures necessary to protect them. Little progress has been made in protecting the global climate, fragile aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, and endangered species, despite the warnings from the scientific community. In many countries there are protest movements calling for greater political interventions and environmental protection, but at the same time there are sections of the population and political elites who vehemently oppose such efforts. There seems to be a deep polarization between and within societies as to which interventions in social and economic processes are necessary and appropriate in order to protect global natural resources for all. This project addresses the question of whether polarized views and preferences about interventions in social processes can impede the formation of institutions and cooperation. For this purpose, the project focuses on a key factor, namely the fundamental willingness of individuals to implement and accept prosocial interventions that restrict or influence the decision of an individual for the benefit of other people. We distinguish between the extrinsic value of an intervention, which consists in changing the final outcome, and the intrinsic value of the intervention, which consists in restricting a person's freedom of choice. In three coordinated work packages, controlled experiments will be used to systematically investigate how these preferences for prosocial interventions can be defined and measured, whether the preferences can explain attitudes toward real institutions, what consequences these preferences have for the formation of institutions and cooperation, and what happens when these preferences are polarized within societies. The aim is to better understand the barriers to institution building and cooperation to protect common resources and to show how these barriers are linked to the polarization of societies.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants