An analysis of climate change coalition formation from a game theoretic perspective
Date
2015
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Unlike traditional environmental problems that often involve conflicts over local resource distribution, climate change is a global externality problem that arises from common ‘ownership’ of the earth’s atmosphere. Climate solutions call for internalizing externalities at a global scale, necessitating international agreement among sovereign states with differing national incomes, priorities, values, cultures and social attitudes toward risks and uncertainty. Diversity at the sovereign state level complicates the process of organizing stakeholders to create international and national solutions that could serve the public good. This dissertation is a game theoretic analysis of decisions leading to the formation of coalitions to address the complexity of global climate change. Game theoretic approaches have been widely applied to analyze strategic behavior in international negotiations and strategic development, particularly in the context of international relations. The models are interdisciplinary, drawing upon the fields of management, economics and political science. The dissertation concludes by discussing the uncertainties associated with the dangerous risks of climate change and how the presence of these uncertainties, in some instances, might lead regions to bargain with one another if free-rider incentives appear to be large. This qualitative investigation recognizes that net benefit and free-rider incentive measurements themselves may not fully capture the complex decision-making and negotiations that take place during the process of coalition formation. Because climate change involves very large uncertainties (especially concerning the magnitude of damages), this dissertation encourages researchers to evaluate the findings of this study multi-dimensionally and with caution.