Titanic lessons for Spaceship Earth to account for human behavior in institutional design

Abstract

Combating environmental degradation requires global cooperation. We here argue that institutional designs for such efforts need to account for human behavior. The voyage of the Titanic serves as an analogous case to learn from, and we use behavioral insights to identify critical aspects of human behavior that serve as barriers or opportunities for addressing the challenges we face. We identify a set of public goods that may help us mitigate identified negative aspects of human behavior, while leveraging the positive aspects: standards and best practices, mechanisms for large-scale coordination, and curation of information to raise awareness and promote action. We use existing international organizations, providing at least one of these capacities, as cases to learn from before applying our insights to existing institutional solutions for global environmental protection. We identify institutional design features that, if adapted to better account for human behavior, could lead to more effective institutional solutions.