Prof. Esther Blanco

Esther Blanco

Full Professor of Economics

Behavioral science for navigating a warming, changing world

I study how behavioral science can help societies overcome collective-action problems under environmental change. My research combines experimental economics, behavioral science and environmental research to understand cooperation and design interventions for climate action, climate preparedness and biodiversity conservation.

9M€+ in competitively funded research project led or co-led · International research leadership· Experimental and field research · Climate and biodiversity.

Research

My research asks how people and institutions respond to environmental change, and how behavioral science can help societies cooperate and adapt in the face of environmental risks.

My research began with fundamental questions about cooperation, collective action and environmental governance. Over time, this programme has evolved toward the behavioral foundations of climate action, climate preparedness and biodiversity conservation. Across these areas, I combine laboratory and field experiments, randomized controlled trials and complementary qualitative and survey-based methods to move from understanding behaviour to testing interventions that can support real-world environmental action. In recent work, I use multi-team and crowd-science approaches to test whether behavioral effects are robust across design and measurement choices by researchers.

The main objectives of my research are:

Understanding cooperation

How do incentives, beliefs, social norms, institutions and environmental pressures shape collective action?

Designing interventions

Which behavioral interventions can strengthen climate action, support for environmental policy and conservation?

Testing what works at scale

Can these interventions produce robust and externally valied effects?

Translating evidence into environmental policy

How can behavioral evidence inform climate mitigation, adaptation and biodiversity policy?

Highlighted ongoing studies

#ManyDesignsCarbon is a crowd-science initiative exploring how behavioral interventions influence public support for carbon pricing. Bringing together teams around the world to ask: What is the impact of behavioral interventions on real-world support for carbon pricing?

#Cooperate4Climate investigates how to foster informed, reflective, and intentional climate decision-making among adolescents, taking into account individual preferences and possibilities.

Selected publications

Fifty-five crowd-sourced designs assessing carbon pricing support. (with Schwaiger, R., Holzknecht, A., Kirchler, M., and Huber, J. and 100+ other co-authors) Revise & Resubmit at Nature Human Behaviour.

A crowd-science project bringing together ~55 international research teams to simultaneously test behavioral interventions aimed at increasing public support for carbon pricing, using a shared experimental protocol so results are directly comparable across designs — the largest coordinated test to date of what actually moves public opinion on carbon pricing.

My contribution: Co-designed and organized the study, co-assessed whether the proposals fulfill all guidelines, co-pre-registered the study, co-wrote the first draft of the manuscript, co-created the descriptive table for all designs, co-funding acquisition.

Increasing benefits in one-time public goods does not promote cooperation. 2024 (with Struwe, N. and Walker, J.M.) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121 (41) e2410326121.

Tests whether people cooperate more in one-time, single-decision settings (like disaster relief donations) when the benefits of cooperation are much larger. Across two studies (N = 2,232, UK general population and students, online and lab), contribution levels did not rise with sharply higher cooperation benefits — a surprising null result showing that people's expectations of others' cooperation, not the payoff itself, drive one-time giving.

My contribution: Acquired funding, co-designed and organized the study, co-wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and served as PhD supervisor of the first author.

Procedural fairness and nepotism among local traditional and democratic leaders in rural Namibia. 2020. (with Vollan, B., Steimanis, I., Petutschnig, F. and Prediger, S.) Science Advances, Vol. 6, no. 15, eaay7651.

A field study with 64 village leaders and 384 villagers in rural Namibia comparing traditional chiefs and democratically elected leaders. Found both types of leaders show similarly high procedural fairness and similarly low nepotism — challenging the assumption that democratic leaders serve constituents better than traditional authorities.

My contribution: Co-designed and organized the study, co-recruited the research team, co-wrote the first draft of the manuscript

Integrating simultaneous prosocial and antisocial behavior into theories of collective action. 2016. (with Basurto, X., Nenadovic, M., and Vollan, B.) Science Advances, 2, e1501220.

Lab-in-the-field experiments (n=127), a fishers' survey (n=544), and expert interviews (n=77) in marine protected area and non-MPA communities in Baja California, Mexico. Shows that antisocial behavior can coexist with prosocial behavior without undermining successful collective action — broadening standard commons theory, which had mostly focused on prosocial cooperation alone. Covered by The Washington Post.

My contribution: Co-designed and organized the study, co-designed the field implementation with NGO partner Nipa Raja and fishing cooperatives in Baja California, co-developed protocols, co-implemented data collection.

No crowding out among those terminated from an ongoing PES program in Colombia. 2023 (with Moros, L., Pfaff, A., I. Steinmanis, Velez, M.A, and Vollan, B.) Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 120, p. 102826.

Tests whether ending a Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) program in Colombia "crowds out" people's intrinsic motivation to conserve, comparing farmers whose contracts were terminated to farmers never enrolled. Finds no evidence of crowding out — terminated participants' conservation motivations and donations were statistically indistinguishable from the non-PES comparison group, addressing a common concern that PES schemes leave conservation worse off once payments stop.

My contribution: First author; led the study design, co-designed the field implementation with NGO partners, co-wrote the first draft of the manuscript.