Invoking Household Cooperation in the Commons Dilemma of CO2 Emission Reduction

Abstract

In the modern community, global effort is required to reduce the CO2 emissions resulting from human actions to acceptable levels. However, global objectives may contradict individual benefits; attempts to reduce CO2 emissions can result in the commons dilemma. This paper explores how the cooperation of individual households can be invoked to achieve a global target of reducing CO2 emissions from households (HACO2) in cities. A commons payoff function linked household benefits to the number of cooperators in a city: a CO2 emission trading scheme (CETS) for households was introduced into the payoff function as a way to support cooperators. A multi-agent simulator was applied to a search for relationships among parameters in the payoff function and social cooperation from households (R). Results indicate that levying only household maintenance charges is an ineffective way to gain the cooperation of more than half of the households in a city, and extremely high maintenance also discouraged cooperative behavior; the use of CETS could increase cooperation, and R > 0.6 when emission trading prices were five times higher than unit reduction costs, and when unit maintenance charges were almost the same as reduction costs; and it was impossible to gain cooperation from all households until opinions about resource use and reducing emissions were changed.