Communication Failure: The Hidden Face of the Tragedy of the Commons

Abstract

This paper studies communication failure regarding risks in the commons. It argues that strategic issues might explain why years of scientific reporting regarding future risks have failed to trigger sufficient climate awareness. We consider a game of contribution to a public bad, where there is uncertainty regarding the damage generated by externalities. Prior to the game, agents receive non-certifiable information regarding the damage from an informed utilitarian expert. We show that in large-scale public good problems information transmission usually fails. We compare this result with the cases of Rawlsian and anti-Rawlsian experts and discuss the implication for climate expert panels. We also investigate the influence of the value of information in our result, which provides us with some insight on the part played by deontology on scientific communication.

Keywords: Public good games, Cheap Talk, Climate Change