Social Design Engineering Series

SDES-2019-14

Intragenerational deliberation and intergenerational sustainability dilemma

Raja R Timilsina
Research Institute for Future Design, Kochi University of Technology

Koji Kotani
School of Economics and Management, Kochi University of Technology
Research Institute for Future Design, Kochi University of Technology

Yoshinori Nakagawa
School of Economics and Management, Kochi University of Technology
Research Institute for Future Design, Kochi University of Technology

Tatsuyoshi Saijo
Research Institute for Humanity and Nature
School of Economics and Management, Kochi University of Technology
Research Institute for Future Design, Kochi University of Technology

13th December, 2019

School of Economics and Management
Research Institute for Future Design
Kochi University of Technology

KUT-SDE working papers are preliminary research documents published by the School of Economics and Management jointly with the ResearchCenter for Social Design Engineering at Kochi University of Technology. To facilitate prompt distribution, they have not been formally reviewed
and edited. They are circulated in order to stimulate discussion and critical comment and may be revised. The views and interpretations expressedin these papers are those of the author(s). It is expected that most working papers will be published in some other form.

Intragenerational deliberation and intergenerationalsustainability dilemma
Raja R Timilsina*,† Koji Kotani*,†,‡,§,¶ Yoshinori Nakagawa*,†
Tatsuyoshi Saijo*,†,‡,||
December 12, 2019

Abstract
Many environmental problems have occurred because the current generation affects future
generations, but the opposite is not true. This one-way nature induces the current generation
to take advantage of resources without considering future generations, which we call “intergenerational sustainability dilemma (ISD).” While deliberation is known to bring a change
in individual opinions and lead to a better decision in some intragenerational problems, little
is known about how “intragenerational deliberation” affects individual opinions and collective decisions for “intergenerational problems such as ISD” in societies. To this end, an ISD
game (ISDG) along with interviews and questionnaires are instituted in rural and urban areas of Nepalese societies. In ISDG, a sequence of six generations, each of which consists ofthree people, is organized, and each generation chooses either to maintain intergenerationalsustainability (sustainable option) or to maximize her own generation’s payoff by irreversibly
imposing a cost on future generations (unsustainable option) under intragenerational “deliberative” process. Our result demonstrates that urban subjects have a wider variety of individual
initial opinions and support an unsustainable option more often than do rural subjects. It also
shows that individual opinions change through deliberation when subjects in a generation do
not share the same initial opinion, reflecting that more urban subjects change opinions; such
opinion changes are identified not to work in the direction to enhance intergenerational sustainability for the urban generations. Overall, our experiment suggests that a closely-knit society
such as rural areas in Nepal is a hope, and intragenerational deliberation neither effectively
affect individual opinions for intergeneration sustainability nor resolve ISD.

Key Words: Intergenerational sustainability dilemma; deliberative process; opinion change* Research Institute for Future Design, Kochi University of Technology†

School of Economics and Management, Kochi University of Technology
Urban Institute, Kyusyu University§
College of Business, Rikkyo University¶
Corresponding author, E-mail: kojikotani757@gmail.com||
Research Institute for Humanity and Nature‡

1

Contents
Nomenclature

2

1

Introduction

3

2

Methods and materials
7
2.1 Study areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.2 Experimental setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.3 Experimental procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

3

Results

16

4

Discussion and conclusion

23

5

References

27

List of Figures

34

List of Tables

38

Nomenclature
IFG

Imaginary future generation

ISD

Intergenerational sustainability dilemma

ISDG Intergenerational sustainability dilemma game
NPR Napalese rupee
SVO Social value orientation
VDC Village development committee

2

1

1

Introduction

2

What the current generation does affects future generations, but the opposite is not true. This

3

one-way nature induces the current generation to take advantage of resources without fully con-4

sidering future generations, which we call the “intergenerational sustainability dilemma (ISD),”5and it is claimed to be a cause of many important problems (Kamijo et al., 2017, Shahrier et al.,6

2017, Nakagawa et al., 2019). Intergenerational problems have occurred, such as climate change,

7

resource depletion, biodiversity loss and long-term governmental debts. However, neither market

8

nor democracy is known to be future-oriented, and it has been pointed out that these institutions

9

favor the current generation maximizing her benefits (Pigou, 1952, Krutilla, 1967, Garri, 2010,10

Thompson, 2010). Intragenerational deliberation is known to bring changes in individual opin-

11

ions and to lead to a better decision in some setting of intragenerational problems (Joseph, 1994,

12

Ostrom, 1990, Ghate et al., 2013, Konrad and Thum, 2018). However, little is known about how

13“intragenerational deliberation” can be effective to affect individual opinions and collective deci-

14

sions for solving “intergenerational problems” such as ISD in societies.

15

The fundamental nature of the sustainability problems can be characterized by ISD. Economic

16

literature defines sustainability as a minimum condition to be satisfied, that is, maintaining the17

welfare of successive generations, as compared with the current generation (Dasgupta and Mitra,

18

1983, Howarth and Norgaard, 1993, Weitzman, 1997). However, many significant social problems

19

have occurred because societies violate the minimum condition of sustainability in which the cur-20

rent generation prioritizes her benefit and leave more burdens on future generations. There is a21

severe threat of global climate change and outstanding governments’ debts in some countries that22

takes more than 100 years to repay (Hansen and Imrohoroglu, 2016). The coastal communities are23

predicted to suffer from a sea-level rise of 2 m by 2100, and it is reported that the rise is due to high24

greenhouse gas emission the current generation cast, leaving huge burdens on many unseen future25

generations (Bamber et al., 2019). Such intergenerational problems can be well represented to oc-

26

cur among non-overlapping generations in a long-run perspective.1 Therefore, this paper addresses
1

Schotter and Sopher (2003, 2006, 2007), Chaudhuri and Paichayontvijit (2006) and Chaudhuri et al. (2009) use

3

27

the ISD problem under non-overlapping generations by conducting framed field experiments.

28

Over the last decade, several studies have used an experimental approach to examine people’s

29

preferences and behaviors regarding intergenerational sustainability. Fisher et al. (2004) show that30

people become less motivated to exploit resources owing to the existence of an “intergenerational

31link” in an intergenerational common pool experiment. Hauser et al. (2014) demonstrate that32

democracy or majority voting tends to promote sustainability of intergenerational goods when a33majority of people are prosocial. Sherstyuk et al. (2016) analyze the level of difficulties in main-34

taining dynamic externality by implementing laboratory experiments of a dynamic game under35

two types of settings: (i) infinitely living decision makers and (ii) multiple generations. They find36that strategic uncertainty makes it difficult to retain dynamic externalities. Kamijo et al. (2017) de-37

sign and implement a laboratory experiment of ISD game (ISDG) with a subject pool of university

38

students by introducing the treatment of “imaginary future generation (IFG)” as negotiators for

39

future generations, claiming that the negotiators improve intergenerational sustainability. Shahrier

40

et al. (2017) conduct ISDG field experiments with the subject pool of general people and analyze

41

generation decisions in urban and rural areas of Bangladesh. They find that rural people are more

42

prosocial and choose a sustainable option more often than urban people.2 Fochmann et al. (2018)43

find that subjects are prudent and fair for an intrageneration allocation, but show fewer concerns for

44

intergenerational fairness in a laboratory experiment. They also claim that the current generation

45

maximizes her payoff through shifting the burden of debts to future generations.

46

Many political scientists and psychologists have studied deliberation to understand processes of47collective decisions making (Rawls, 1993, Chambers, 2003, Niemeyer and Dryzek, 2007).3 Several
experimental games in which the current generation is incentivized to give advice to subsequent generations for their
better choices and the possibility of Pareto improvement mostly exists. More specifically, the current generation’s payoff depends on subsequent generations’ actions (or performances) as if the relation is between parents and children.
Schotter and Sopher (2003, 2006, 2007), Chaudhuri and Paichayontvijit (2006) and Chaudhuri et al. (2009) refer thistype of overlapping generational situations to as “intergenerational setting,” and address the roles of social learning
through advice over generations. However, in ISD, our focus is on addressing sustainability for long-run relationship across generations as if they are non-overlapping, and such long-run sustainability problems are exemplified byemergence of global climate change, various environmental problems and government debts as mentioned earlier.
2
Shahrier et al. (2017) also seek to confirm whether or not the IFG proposed by Kamijo et al. (2017) enhancesintergenerational sustainability, demonstrating that the IFG is not effective.
3
The popular decision-making mechanisms by groups in experiments are majority voting and unanimity (See, e.g.,
Denant-Boomont et al., 2017). An exception is Gerardi and Yariv (2007) that implement a “deliberative majority

4

48

experimental studies, such as Simon and Sulkin (2002), have analyzed the role of deliberation in49

relation to equity and sociodemographic backgrounds, concluding that deliberative discussion can

50

bring about fair and equitable outcomes for intragroup members. Goeree and Yariv (2011) also51

conduct deliberation experiments under different institutions of majority and unanimity, reporting

52

that deliberation promotes fair outcomes across the institutions. Ban et al. (2012) use field data

53

from south India, suggesting that, even in heterogeneous societies, deliberation is important in that54

it can induce long-term agreement about priorities of providing several public goods. List et al.

55(2013) analyze deliberative data, showing that deliberation can help resolve the salient issues.

56

Overall, theories and empirical studies suggest that deliberation is effective in many collective

57

decision environments.

58

Group behaviors have been intensively studied to understand how communication influences59

people’s behaviors through social interactions (Dawes et al., 1977, Isaac and Walker, 1988, Born-

60

stein and Ben-Yossef, 1994, Kugler et al., 2012, Charness and Sutter, 2012, Cooper and Kuhn,

61

2016, Meub and Proeger, 2017, Crawford and Harris, 2018, Carbone et al., 2019, Vollstadt and62

Bohm, 2019). Intragroup communication makes groups more competitive and self-regarding in63

a socioeconomic context such as market competition, tournament and bargaining (Kugler et al.,64

2012, Charness and Sutter, 2012). Cason and Mui (1997) use a dictator game allowing for intra-

65

group face-to-face communication in a non-competitive and non-strategic environment, and claim

66

that such communication induces intergroup fairness. On the other hand, Luhan et al. (2009) con-67

duct a dictator game to re-examine group behaviors by letting subjects to make not only individual68

but also group decisions using electronic chats as a medium of communication. They find that69

groups are more selfish than individuals, and the most selfish group member has the strongest

70

influence on group decisions.4 Overall, how intragroup (intrageneration) face-to-face communica-

71

tion (deliberation) affects intergroup (intergenerational) fairness in economic decision-making isvoting” rule to understand coordination in a group decision. They identify that it eliminates some possible outcomes
and does not necessarily lead to a better decision.
4
Numerous experimental studies have used simple distribution games or dictator games to confirm an existence ofpeople’s concerns toward others, such as altruism, empathy and fairness, finding that people do not selfishly behave
by giving a substantial share to others in such games (Fehr, 1999, Fehr and Gachter, 2000, Fischbacher et al., 2001,
Charness and Rabin, 2002, Engelmann and Strobel, 2004).

5

72

an important area to be explored and analyzed.5

73

Irrespective of types of governance, institutions and societies, whether people care about oth-74

ers or future generations depends on the degrees of prosociality, trust and fairness, which are

75

affected by the cultural and economic environment (Ockenfels and Weimann, 1999, Henrich et al.,76

2005, Wilson et al., 2009, Henrich et al., 2010a, Brosig-Koch et al., 2011, Leibbrandt et al., 2013,77

Shahrier et al., 2017). Furthermore, as societies become more capitalistic and competitive, the78

current generation tends to become more proself, compromising sustainability (Fisher et al., 2004,

79

Shahrier et al., 2016, 2017, Timilsina et al., 2017). Although social devices such as communica-

80

tion, discussion and deliberation in collective decision-making are demonstrated to resolve some81

class of intragenerational problems on not only social but also economic issues, such as prisoner’s

82

dilemma, public goods provision and common pool resource utilization (Cardenas, 2000, Cardenas

83

et al., 2000, Cason et al., 2012, Ghate et al., 2013), little is known about how “intragenerational84

deliberation” affects individual opinions and collective decisions for “intergenerational problems”

85such as ISD in societies.

86

We design and institute a series of new procedures for the ISDG field experiments to examine87

whether and how deliberation changes individual opinions and hence resolves ISD in fields. In

88

ISDG, we organize a sequence of six generations, each of which consists of three subjects, and89

each generation is asked to decide between maintaining intergenerational sustainability (sustain-

90

able option) and maximizing its own generation’s payoff by irreversibly imposing a cost on future91

generations (unsustainable option) through deliberative discussion. As a new element of our ISDG

92

experimental design, we conduct individual interviews after subjects finish making their genera-

93

tion’s decision. In the interviews, we elicit each subject’s “individual initial opinion” about which94

option she supported before and “individual final opinion” after her generation’s deliberation as a95

personal opinion, respectively. This interview process enables us to clarify whether each subject
5

An important area of investigation in economics is how intragroup interactions affect intergroup economic outcomes to resolve some dilemmas and it has a long-term impact (Hauge et al., 2019, Brandon et al., 2019, Kotchen andSegerson, 2019, Tilman et al., 2019). The past literature has shown that social interactions influence group choices.
Building upon these studies, our ISDG experiments are designed for the purpose of understanding and exploring how
intragroup (intragenerational) face-to-face communication can be effective for intergroup (intergenerational) fairness
as discussed in Engelmann and Strobel (2004).

6

96changes her opinions over a course of deliberation. To generalize and better characterize the role97

of deliberation on ISD in real fields, we conduct our experiment along with a questionnaire sur-98

vey for sociodemographic and psychological information in both rural and urban areas of Nepal.6

99With this approach, this paper seeks to answer the following open questions: (i) Does intragenera-

100

tional deliberation change individual opinions of rural and urban subjects for an intergenerational

101

problem such as ISD in a different manner? (ii) Do such changes in individual opinions induce102

generations to resolve ISD in each society?

1032

Methods and materials

104

2.1

Study areas

105

We conduct the experiments in two kinds of Nepalese fields: (i) urban areas, such as Kath-106

mandu, Lalitpur, Bhaktapur and Pokhara city, and (ii) rural areas of several traditional villages

107

from Prabhat and Chitwan districts. Both areas are almost homogeneous in terms of culture, lan-

108

guage and religion. The urban areas usually have the highest human development index (HDI)

109

on the basis of UNDP (2014), and the population density is high. For instance, Kathmandu has

110

a population density of 4416 people per km2 (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2011) and is the most111

crowded city, with 24.3 % of the total urban population in Nepal. Big cities such as Kathmandu

112

and Pokhara are the centers for businesses and services. The rural areas consist of different vil-113

lages of the Western Hills and Central Terai, such as the Prabhat and Chitwan districts (figure 1).

114

The population densities of Chitwan and Prabhat are 261 people per km2 and 297 people per km2 ,

115

respectively (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2011). All of these villages are agrarian societies, and116

the dwellers engage in farming generation after generation. A limited number of businesses and117

services, typically small-scale ones, are available.
6

Henrich et al. (2001) and Fehr and Leibbrandt (2011) demonstrate that observations of any economic decision inexperiments tend to reflect naturally occurring situations or vice versa. In this sense, this experimental framework inrural and urban areas can be considered a useful building block to understand and clarify whether there are differences
across people’s opinions regarding ISD in various societies.

7

[Figure 1 about here.]

118

119

2.2

Experimental setup

120

We conduct an intergenerational sustainability dilemma game (ISDG), an individual interview,

121

a social value orientation (SVO) game and questionnaire surveys to obtain critical thinking dispo-122

sition and sociodemographic data in the field.

123

Intergenerational sustainability dilemma game and deliberation

124

The ISDG is implemented following the laboratory and field experiments in Kamijo et al.

125(2017) and Shahrier et al. (2017). Building upon these previous ISDG experiments, we add a

126

new element of individual interviews to the experimental design, the details of which shall be

127

discussed later. Three subjects in a group are called a generation, and each generation needs to128choose between options A and B. The generation receives a payoff of X by choosing option A

129

and the payoff X − 300 by choosing option B. After making a choice between options A and130

B, the generation is asked to split the payoff associated with the option they choose among the131

generation members. Each of the subject’s payoffs in ISDG is the sum of their generation share

132

plus the initial experimental endowment of 300. For instance, by choosing A, the generation earns

133

1200 experimental points (X = 1200), whereas by choosing B, the generation earns 900 points

134(= X − 300 = 1200 − 300). Consequently, if members of this generation split the payoff equally

135

among them, each member earns 400 by choosing A and 300 by choosing B as a generation share.

136

Therefore, the total payoff of each subject with generation choice A becomes 700 (= 400 + 300),

137

whereas it becomes 600 (= 300 + 300) with generation choice B.

138

Each generation is allowed to deliberate over the decision between options A and B as well as

139

how to split the generation payoff up to 10 minutes of discussion. However, when the decisions

140

cannot be made within 10 minutes, the following rules have been applied, (1) if the generation share141

the group receives is positive, each member receives an initial endowment of 300 only, (2) if the

8

142

generation share the group receives is negative, say, −Z, each member equally splits −Z by three143

and receives the payment of −Z/3 plus an initial endowment of 300 (See a supplementary material

144

of experimental instructions for the details). After the generation decision between A and B, each145

subject undergoes an individual interview in which she is asked to state her “individual initial

146

opinion” and “individual final opinion” regarding supporting A or B. This individual interview is147

a new element compared to the preexisting ISDG experiments in Kamijo et al. (2017) and Shahrier

148

et al. (2017), clarifying how an individual opinion changes over a course of deliberation and the149role of deliberation for affecting individual opinions.

150

Each session consists of 18 ∼ 24 subjects, organizing a sequence of 6 ∼ 8 generations. Each151

generation is randomly assigned to one of the 1st, 2nd, . . . and 6th generations. When the num-152

ber of subjects that participated in a session are 21 or 24, we organize 7th and even 8th genera-

153

tions. However, they are assigned as 1st and 2nd in another sequence of generations as indicated154

in figure 3. One generation’s decision affects the subsequent generations such that subsequent

155

generations’ payoffs decreases uniformly by 300 when the current generation chooses option A,

156

otherwise not. For instance, suppose that X = 1200 and the 1st generation chooses A. Then,157

the 2nd generation will face a game in which they can receive 900 and 600 by choosing A and158

B, respectively. However, if the 1st generation chooses B, the next generation can have the same

159

decision environment as the 1st generation faced. That is, when the 1st generation chooses B,

160

the 2nd generation can have the game in which they can receive 1200 and 900 by choosing A and161

B, respectively. Following the same rule, the game continues for the rest of the subsequent two

162

generations (i.e., between ith and i + 1th generations). Hence, option B can be considered a “sus-163

tainable option,” whereas option A is the choice that compromises intergenerational sustainability

164

and can be considered as an “unsustainable option.” In each session, the 1st generation starts ISDG

165

with X = 1200, implying that the 5th and 6th generations may face the game in which options

166

A and B are associated with payoffs of zero and −300, respectively, when previous generations

167

keep choosing option A.7 In ISDG, the subjects are paid 550 NPR (≈ 5.50 USD) at maximum and7

When the 5th and 6th generations face the game in which options A and B are associated with zero or a negative
payoff of −300, the generation members can refund themselves equally from their initial endowment of 300 to make

9

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350 NPR (≈ 3.50 USD) on average (The NPR stands for Nepalese rupees).

169

Individual interviews

170

An individual interview is conducted for each subject after her generation decides between

171

options A and B in ISDG. In this interview, we investigate the patterns of the shift in individual172

opinions to have supported A, B or to have been ambivalent (no ideas) coded as N as her “individ-

173

ual initial opinion” and “individual final opinion” before and after the deliberation, respectively.

174

Each subject is asked to answer whether she supported A, B or N and the associated reasons “be-175

fore and after” a course of deliberation. The interviewers ask questions such as (1) “your personal176

opinion might have been different from the group decision. At the moment of the group decision,

177

what did you really want to support as your personal opinion?” for her “individual final opinion”

178

and the corresponding reasons and (2) “Before the group deliberation started, what did you re-179

ally support as your personal opinion?” for her “individual initial opinion” and the corresponding180

reasons.

181

The individual interviews successfully identify whether each subject changes her individual

182

opinion to have supported A, B and/or N through deliberation. For instance, some subject is183

recognized to have supported A as her “individual initial opinion” before deliberation but to have184

ended up supporting B as her “individual final opinion” after deliberation. In this case, her opinion

185

change is coded as AB, where the first letter represents her initial personal support for A before

186

deliberation and the second letter does her final personal support for B after deliberation. In the187

same manner, we identify and code subjects’ opinion changes through individual interviews, and188

the possible combinations of opinion changes are AA, AB, AN, BA, BB, BN, N A, N B and N N .

189

With this information about individual opinion changes before and after deliberation, we can also

190

identify whether each generation has a unanimous opinion agreement to decide between options A

191

and B before and after deliberation.8
the individual payoff be at least zero.
8
An alternative way to collect the same data of individual opinions is to incentivize or to ask each subject toreveal their opinions to support A, B and N in a timely manner, i.e., each subject is asked to reveal an “individual
initial opinion” before deliberation and again asked to reveal an “individual final opinion” after deliberation. However,

10

192

Social value orientation (SVO) games

193

An SVO experiment of the “slider method” is conducted to identify subjects’ social preferences194

as prosocial or proself in urban and rural areas, following Murphy et al. (2011). Figure 2 shows195

six items of the slider measure that assign numbers to represent outcomes for oneself and for196

the other in a pair of persons, where the other is unknown to the subject. Subjects are asked to197

make one choice among the nine options for each item. Each subject chooses her allocation by198

marking a line at the point that defines her most preferred distribution between oneself and the199

other (See figure 2). The mean allocation for oneself As and the mean allocation for the other Ao200

are computed from all six items (See figure 2). Then, 50 is subtracted from As and Ao to shift the201base of the resulting angle to the center of the circle (50, 50). The index of a subject’s SVO is given

202o )−50by SVO = arctan (A. Depending on the values generated from the test, social preferences(As )−50

203

are categorized as follows: 1. altruist: SVO > 57.15◦ , 2. prosocial: 22.45◦ < SVO < 57.15◦ , 3.

204

individualist: −12.04◦ < SVO < 22.45◦ and 4. competitive: SVO < −12.04◦ .

205[Figure 2 about here.]206

The SVO framework assumes that people have different motivations and goals for evaluating

207

resource allocations between oneself and others. Also, the SVOs or social preferences are estab-

208

lished to be stable for a long time (See, e.g., Van Lange et al., 2007, Brosig-Koch et al., 2011).

209

Responses that are yielded from six primary items give complete categories of social preferences.

210

Major reasons for using six primary slider measures developed by Murphy et al. (2011) are its sim-

211

plicity and it is easy to implement in the Nepalese context. It is intuitive for subjects to understandthis timely-manner procedure does not reflect the process of real-world deliberative group decisions, and it is also
reported to induce subjects to have unnecessarily strong priming and anchoring effects on individual opinions that
influence group deliberations and decisions (Kahneman, 2011, Kotani et al., 2014). Qualitative behavioral researchestablishes that individual opinions and ideas can be truthfully elicited by individual interviews after the incidencesof interest (Brinkmann, 2014). In addition, in our pilot experiment with 48 subjects, we confirm that individual initialand final opinions elicited by our interview procedure are consistent with group deliberations and decisions. Subjects
might show active misrepresentation of intentions in experiments when there is a strategic interaction to gain extra
benefits (Crawford, 2003, Crawford and Harris, 2018). Following this line of research, we have used an interview
method and this interview was conducted after the intragenerational deliberation where subjects have no intentions tolie. Specifically, we collect individual opinions through individual interviews “after” generations’ decisions between
options A and B are made. The main results in our research regarding individual opinions and generation decisions
that will be presented later are consistent with one another.

11

212

even with a limited level of education. As is often done in psychology, we further simplify the four213

categories of social preferences into two categories of prosocial and proself types: “altruist” and214“prosocial” types are categorized as “prosocial” subjects, whereas “individualistic” and “competi-

215

tive” types are categorized as “proself” subjects (See Murphy et al., 2011). Subjects are informed

216

that the units represented in this game are points and that more points mean he/she will earn more217

real money (See the SVO instruction in figure 2).

218

In this game, the subject receives 150 NPR (NPR = Nepalese rupees) after applying some219

exchange rate to the points she obtains (≈ 1.5 USD) at maximum and 100 NPR (≈ 1.0 USD)

220

on average. Subjects are instructed not to talk or discuss and the decision for SVO is made in221

private. To compute the payoff of the subjects from this game, we collect the answer sheets from222

all subjects, then we randomly match one subject with another subject as a pair. The experimental

223

payoff in this SVO game is the summation of points from 6 selections by herself for oneself and 6

224

selection by the partner for the other. We also explain the methods of random matching and payoff

225

calculation with the exchange rate for the real money incentive to subjects.

226

Critical thinking disposition

227

Critical thinking is defined as a cognitive process that consist of many different skills such as

228

analysis, evaluation, inference, and inquisitiveness that is used appropriately for making a logical229

solution to a problem or a valid conclusion to an argument (Dwyer and Hogan, 2014). The logical230

thinking subscale of the critical thinking disposition scale was adopted in the questionnaire sur-231

veys, following Nakagawa (2015). This subscale consists of 13 items, which could be translated

232

into English as follows: (1) “I am good at thinking about complex problems in an orderly fashion,”

233(2) “I am good at collecting my thoughts,” (3) “I am confident in thinking about things precisely,”234(4) “I am good at making persuasive arguments,” (5) “I am confused when thinking about complex

235

problems” (reversed item), (6) “I am usually the one to make decisions because my peers believe I

236

can make fair judgments,” (7) “I can concentrate on grappling with problems,” (8) “I can continue

237

working on a difficult problem that is not straightforward,” (9) “I can think about things coher-

12

238

ently,” (10) “One of my shortcomings is that I am easily distracted” (reversed item), (11) “When239

I think about a solution, I am unable to think about other alternatives” (reversed item), (12) “I can

240

inquire into things carefully,” and (13) “I am constructive in proposing alternatives.” Items were241

rated from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The summation of rates from 1 to 5 over 13

242

items is the scale of critical thinking disposition, and the theoretical range is 13-65.

243

2.3

Experimental procedure244

The experiments involve hiring local supporting staffs and research assistants (the first author245

is a chief administrator for the experiment). The experimental procedures are the same between

246

urban and rural areas except for recruitment of subjects. In rural areas, subjects are informed in

247

advance (a week ago) and asked to show up at the village schools and/or government agricul-

248

tural community halls at a given date and time. To collect subjects, we are supported by local

249

government offices known as village development committees (VDCs) and randomly select the250

households from the list of residents in rural areas (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2011). Based on251

the random selection, we send an invitation letter to the selected households and one member in252

a household is invited to participate in our experiments. The participation rate is approximately

253

95 % which becomes high due to proper incentives provided in this experiment.

254

In urban areas, we conduct occupation-based randomization by taking the desired number of255

subjects from each occupation such as banking, government, health, education, business, trans-

256

portation and entertainment (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2011).9 The experiment is conducted at

257

district health organization training halls in urban areas that are in the center of the cities consisting258

of many rooms. We send an invitation letter to different offices requesting people to participate in259

our experiment. One week prior to the experiment, the letters are dispatched to the selected orga-

260

nizations. We conduct experiments on the weekend and, due to proper incentives, the participation

261

rate is high that is 80 %. On an average, we paid 550 NPR (≈ 5.00 USD) to each subject including262

a fixed participation fee of 100 NPR (≈ 1.0 USD) in rural and urban areas.
9

Occupation-based randomization is done to have a representative urban sample in our experiments.

13

[Figure 3 about here.]

263

264

Upon arriving at the locations, subjects are gathered in one hall and they are given experi-

265

mental instructions in their native language (Nepali). Once everybody is present in a room, an

266

experimenter (the first author) also gives subjects a verbal explanation about experimental rules.

267

To maintain anonymity across generations, first, we confirm that subjects have fully understood268

the rules, and second, they are asked to proceed toward a door one by one and pick up a chip out

269

of a bag that contains their generation ID and individual ID.10 According to the IDs, each subject

270

goes to and sits in a specific room. In the end, we place the generations in separate rooms by

271

their generation IDs. In this way, each subject can not observe and identify which person belong

272

to a specific generation in a sequence (she knows only the members of her generation), however,273

they can realize that they are assigned to one generation within a sequence. However, they are not274

informed of which generation is the last within a sequence of generations.

275

The research assistants distribute questionnaires and explain the experimental procedures once276

again to subjects and keep them engage. In ISDG, the 1st generation makes deliberation up to277

10 minutes where it is recorded and their generation decision is confirmed. Once a generation278

finishes making her decision after the deliberation, the members are asked to move to an individual

279

interview room, one person by one person. This process is necessary to assure anonymity and280

privacy among subjects in a generations or across generations regarding how they answer in each281

interview. After the the 1st generation decision and individual interviews, we proceed to the 2nd282

generation with the same procedures. A series of these routines are applied to the rest of the next

283

generations from 3rd to 6th ones.

284

The previous generations’ decisions are passed to the subsequent generations and they can see

285

them if they are other than the 1st generation.11 Each subject in a generation is asked to confirm
10

Several quizzes are administered to check subject’s understanding of the game. We proceed with the experiment
after confirming that all subjects answer the quizzes correctly.
11
Note that we use more than 6 rooms in a session depending on the days, locations and the number of subjects,
and prepare a separate room for each generation to keep anonymity among generation in a sequence (figure 3). This
experimental environment is important to avoid a situation where the subjects have any “observer effect.” In this way,
we sought to avoid the “observer effect.” On the other hand, some literature has concluded that the “observer effect”
is mostly insignificant in many allocation games such as bargaining, dictator and ultimatum ones under laboratory

14

286

which generation they belong to in a sequence and the payoffs associated with options A and B.

287

With this information, each generation deliberates and decides between intergenerational unsus-

288

tainable option A and sustainable option B in an ascending order from the 1st generation to 6th289

generation. After the generation decision, each subject gets interviewed to state her “individual

290

initial opinion” and “individual final opinion” to have supported A, B or N before and after delib-

291

eration. After the ISDG game and individual interviews, the SVO game follows. Finally, we ask

292

subjects to finish questionnaire surveys for their sociodemographic and psychological information293

at the end of a session.

294

In ISD situations, there is no possibility of Pareto improvement across generations, all pos-295

sible decisions are Pareto efficient, and rational agents & generations in standard economic the-296

ory are predicted to support and choose option A. In behavioral economics, Charness and Rabin297(2002) and Engelmann and Strobel (2004) suggest some models of social preferences, social-298

efficiency and maximin preferences. Considering ISD as a simple distribution experiment among299

non-overlapping generations, these models suggest that a generation is likely to choose option

300

B, when more members possess preferences for prosociality, social-efficiency, maximin and/or a301

combination of these preferences. All of these predictions are qualitatively valid when we reason-

302

ably assume that deliberation induces a generation to decide between options A and B, reflecting303

the preferences of the majority in a generation.

304

Our hypothesis in this experiment is that intragenerational deliberation induces individual opin-

305

ions and collective decisions to support intergenerational sustainability in ISD (Brandon et al.,306

2019, Hauge et al., 2019). Theory of deliberative process establishes that deliberation can bring a

307change in individual opinions and resolve important problems in collective decision environments

308(see, e.g., Simon and Sulkin, 2002, Goeree and Yariv, 2011, Ban et al., 2012, List et al., 2013).

309

Given this state of affairs, this research is considered to provide an experimental and analytical

310

framework to explore how intragenerational deliberation induces a change in individual opinions,311

leading generations to resolve ISD. However, the patterns of such changes in individual opinions
settings (Bolton and Zwick, 1995, Laury et al., 1995, Roth, 1995).

15

312

may depend on the types of societies due to a difference of human nature, economic environment

313

and characteristics between rural and urban areas, leading to a distinct outcome of generation de-314

cisions in ISDG (Cason and Mui, 1998, Engel, 2011, Fehr and Leibbrandt, 2011, Crawford and315

Harris, 2018). Specifically, this paper seeks to explore the following open questions: (i) Does

316

intragenerational deliberation change individual opinions of rural and urban subjects for an in-

317

tergenerational problem such as ISD in a different manner? (ii) Do such changes in individual

318

opinions induce generations to resolve ISD in each society?

319

3Results

320

Summary statistics about subjects’ sociodemographic and psychological variables collected

321

through questionnaire surveys are presented in table 1. In rural areas, 44 % of the subjects are322

male, while, in urban areas, 66 % of them are male. This fact reflects that a considerable portion of323

household heads are working away from home in rural areas (Massey et al., 2010). With respect to324

education, subjects in rural areas only possess 10 years of schooling on an average, whereas more325

than 50 % of the subjects in urban areas have an undergraduate degree with 16 years of schooling.

326

With respect to employment, 88 % of the rural subjects engage in farming and forestry as their327

main activities, whereas only 37 % of urban subjects do so. The household income is lower in328

rural areas than in urban areas, and the percentages of a single family structure in rural and urban

329

areas are, respectively, 47 % and 62 %. The average family size does not differ between urban

330

and rural areas. The critical thinking disposition is slightly lower in rural areas than in urban

331

areas. With respect to social value orientation, 62 % and 47 % of subjects are prosocial in rural332

and urban areas, respectively. Overall, the summary statistics regarding the sociodemographic and333

psychological variables presented in table 1 suggest that there are some differences between these334

two areas.

335[Table 1 about here.]

16

336

[Table 2 about here.]

337

Generation choices for the intergenerational unsustainable option A and sustainable option B

338

in ISDG are presented in table 2. It indicates that from a total of 121 generations (62 and 59

339

generations are in rural and urban areas, respectively), 90 (74.38 %) generations choose sustain-

340

able option B and 31 (25.62 %) generations choose unsustainable option A. Furthermore, in rural

341

areas, from 62 generations, 52 (83.87 %) generations choose option B and 10 (16.13 %) gener-

342

ations choose option A. In urban areas, from 59 generations, 38 (64.41 %) generations choose343

option B and 21 (35.59 %) generations choose option A. We perform a chi-squared test with the344null hypothesis that the distributions over generation choices between options A and B across the345

two areas are the same. The result rejects the null hypothesis at a statistical significance of 5 %346(χ2 = 6.01, p = 0.014). In summary, generations in urban areas more often choose the intergener-

347

ational unsustainable option A than generations in rural areas.

348[Table 3 about here.]349

The frequency and percentage of generation choices between options A and B with respect to350

the number of prosocial members in each generation are presented in table 3. In both rural and351

urban areas, the choices of sustainable option B increase with the number of prosocial members

352

in a generation. Another interesting fact is that a majority of generations choose B in rural areas353

when at least one subject in a generation is prosocial. In contrast, in urban areas, a majority of354

generations do not necessarily choose B even when one subject in a generation is prosocial. These

355

facts illustrate that in addition to prosociality in a generation, there may be other factors, such356

as an area effect, that affect generation choices between unsustainable option A and sustainable357

option B. For this purpose, we perform a logistic regression to characterize a generation choice358

with respect to prosociality, areas and other independent variables. Table 5 presents the marginal359

effects of an independent variable on the probability for a generation to choose option B, taking

360

the generation choice of option A as the base group for the dependent variable in the logistic361

regression. In model 1, we include an area dummy and the number of prosocial members in each
17

362

generation as independent variables. To check the robustness of the result in model 1, we add

363

other sociodemographic and psychological variables such as gender, education, monthly income,364

single family type, critical thinking disposition, agricultural involvement, the previous generations’365

decision and the percentage of choosing option B in sequence history at a generational level in

366model 2 (see table 4 for the definitions).

367[Table 4 about here.]

368

Model 1 in table 5 shows that the area dummy and a number of prosocial subjects in a gen-369

eration are economically and statistically significant, demonstrating that generations in rural areas

370

have a 14.2 % greater probability of choosing sustainable option B compared with generations in371

urban areas. Furthermore, an increase in a number of prosocial members per generation leads to a372

21.5 % increase in the probability of choosing B. These two findings are statistically significant at373

the 5 % and 1 % levels, respectively. In model 2 of table 5, gender, education, monthly income, sin-374

gle family type, critical thinking disposition, agricultural involvement, the previous generations’375

decision and the percentage of choosing option B in sequence history as explanatory variables

376

have no effect on generation choices.12 Overall, the analysis suggests that the number of prosocial

377

members per generation and the area dummy are consistently significant and robust, irrespective378

of the regression specifications and they are important determinants for generation decisions.

379[Table 5 about here.]380

Table 6 presents the frequency and percentage of “individual initial opinion” to have supported

381

A, B or to have been ambivalent (or no ideas) as N before deliberation and the “individual final

382

opinion” after deliberation. When there are no individual opinion changes from initial to final
12
To check the robustness for the main result in table 5, we run additional models of logit regression. We consider(i) the previous generations’ choices within a sequence history and (ii) some sociodemographic variables at the generational level as independent variables, building upon the base model 1. Table 5 presents the marginal effects of the
independent variables, confirming that the percentage of choosing option B by previous generations within a sequence
history as well as the sociodemographic variables are not significant in model 2. We have also tried some interaction terms between area dummy and the percentage of choosing option B in history (sociodemographic variables),however, none of them are significant. We have consistently found the same tendency that the number of prosocial
members and the area dummy remain significant 1 % and 10 % level.

18

383

opinions, such situations are coded as AA, BB or N N , where the first (second) letter represents the384

individual opinions before (after) deliberation. The other combinations of the two letters represent

385

a situation in which a subject changes her individual opinions over a course of deliberation. For

386

instance, AB describes a situation in which the subject initially had her initial opinion to support

387

A before deliberation, but changed her final opinion to support B after deliberation. Subjects who388

do not change their opinions to support sustainable option B (i.e., subjects with BB) account389

for 78.49 % and 55.93 % in rural and urban areas, respectively (See table 6). Subjects who do not390

change their opinions to support unsustainable option A (i.e., subjects with AA) account for 9.14 %391

and 16.95 % in rural and urban areas, respectively. This result implies that a majority of subjects

392

in rural areas have a consistent opinion of BB, whereas approximately half of subjects in urban

393

areas exhibit variation in their opinions other than BB through deliberation.13

394

Table 6 also shows that individual opinion changes occur much more often in urban areas than395

in rural areas. These results are in line with the fact that more prosocial subjects are found in rural

396

areas than in urban areas (see table 1). In fact, we identify that a majority of rural subjects are397

prosocial, expressing their opinions to support BB in their interviews. To identify the variation398

in initial and final opinions, we apply the coefficient of “unalikeability” as a concept of variability

399

for an unordered categorical variable (Gordon, 1986, Kader and Perry, 2007, Frankfort-Nachmias

400

and Leon-Guerrero, 2017).14 We have identified that the coefficients of “unalikeability” in initial

401(final) opinions are 0.24 (0.32) and 0.46 (0.52) for rural and urban areas, respectively, confirming

402

that urban subjects have a wider variety of initial and final opinions than rural subjects.
[Table 6 about here.]

403

404

The previous literature has suggested that deliberation leads to collective decisions with una-

405

nimity (Gerardi and Yariv, 2007, Neilson and Winter, 2008, Gillet et al., 2009, Ruth and Danziger,
13

Subjects changing their opinions from A (N ) to B, as AB (N B). 1.08 % (2.15 %) and 6.78 % (1.13 %) of subjects
are classified as AB (N B) in rural and urban areas, respectively. These percentages are not necessarily high comparedwith those of other opinion shifts, such as BA or BN . For instance, 2.15 % (5.38 %) and 6.21 % (5.08 %) of subjects
are classified as BA (BN ) in rural and urban areas, respectively.
14
The coefficient of “unalikeability” measures how often observations differ from one another within a same treatment group, and it is measured on a scale from 0 to 1 and higher the value is, the more unalike or variable the data
are.

19

406

2016). With the data regarding individual opinion changes, we examine whether the aforemen-407

tioned claim is true in ISDG. To this end, we introduce some terminologies to classify various cases408

of unanimity that can arise in ISDG. When all members in a generation have the same “individual

409

initial opinion” of A, B or N before the deliberation, we call such a generation as a generation

410

with “unanimity before deliberation;” otherwise, it is called a generation with “nonunanimity be-411

fore deliberation.” Similarly, when all the members in a generation have the same “individual final

412

opinion” of A, B or N , it is called a generation with “unanimity after deliberation;” otherwise, it413

is called a generation with “nonunanimity after deliberation.” With these definitions, all the gen-414

erations fall into one of the following unanimity categories: 1. Unanimity and 2. Nonunanimity

415

before and after deliberation.

416

Table 7 presents that, out of a total of 121 generations, 91 generations (39 and 52 in urban and417

rural areas) have unanimity before deliberation but only 75 generations (32 and 43 in urban and418

rural areas) are identified to have unanimity after deliberation. Thus, the number of generations

419

that reached unanimity decline from 91 to 75 through deliberation. Furthermore, to statistically420

establish our result, we run a chi-squared test with the null hypothesis that the distributions of

421

generations that reach unanimity before and after deliberations are the same. The result rejects

422

the null hypothesis at 5 % significance level (χ2 = 4.73, p = 0.029), implying that deliberation

423

in ISDG does not necessarily induce generations to reach unanimity. The previous literature has

424suggested that “deliberation leads to collective decisions with unanimity” (Gerardi and Yariv, 2007,

425

Neilson and Winter, 2008, Gillet et al., 2009, Ruth and Danziger, 2016). However, in ISDG, such426

a claim is unlikely to be true.

427[Table 7 about here.]428

Next, we statistically analyze the factors that cause individual opinion changes through delib-429

eration. For identifying such factors, we run logit regression taking an individual opinion change

430

through deliberation as a dependent variable. The dependent variable is a dummy variable that431

takes a value of 1 when a subject changes her opinion to support A, B or N before and after de-432

liberation, such as AB, AN, BA, BN, N A and N B. The independent variables include the area
20

433

dummy, critical thinking disposition, preunanimity, minority dummy, social value orientation and434

sociodemographic factors such as gender, age, education, monthly income, family size and agri-

435

cultural involvement. The definitions of all the variables are summarized as “variables at individual

436

level” in table 4. Table 8 presents the marginal effects of an independent variable on the proba-437

bility for a subject to have an opinion change in models 1 and 2. In model 1, we do not control

438

for sociodemographic variables, while we include sociodemographic variables in model 2 for a439

robustness check.

440

The area dummy, critical thinking disposition and preunanimity dummy have a negative ef-

441

fect on an individual opinion change, while the minority dummy has a positive effect on opinion

442

changes through the deliberation in both models 1 and 2. On the other hand, the sociodemographic

443

variables in model 2 do not exhibit any effect.15 The area dummy is statistically significant in that444

rural subjects are 10.1 % less likely to change their opinions through the deliberation, compared to445

urban subjects. This rural-area effect is considered strong because a high portion of rural subjects

446(78.49 %) consistently chose sustainable option B (See table 6). In summary, it appears that there447

are less variation in individual opinions and less chances in opinion changes among rural people,

448

because they usually have homogeneous culture and ways of thinking that come from similar so-

449

cial learning and experiences from generation to generation through social interactions (Hooper

450

et al., 2015, Schniter et al., 2015).
[Table 8 about here.]

451

452

The results in model 1 show that a critical thinking and unanimity before deliberation are neg-

453

atively associated for a member of a generation to change his/her opinions through deliberation.16

454

However, the magnitude of the effect of critical thinking on opinion changes could be considered455

rather small. Subjects with higher critical thinking abilities should be able to judge and understand456

the quality of arguments with a logical validity in deliberation. Therefore, they are less likely to15

We have also tried different specifications of regressions in addition to models 1 and 2, but the qualitatively
identical results have been obtained.
16
One-unit-scale increase in critical thinking disposition leads to a decrease of 1 % in the probability for a memberof a generation to change his/her opinions through deliberation at 1 % significance level.

21

457

change their opinion, being qualitatively consistent with previous researches (Nakagawa, 2015,

458

Howarth et al., 2016). Furthermore, when generations have unanimity before deliberation (or pre-459

unanimity in the regression), the probability for their members to change their opinions decreases

460

by 10.1 % at 5 % significance level, compared with generations without the unanimity. Overall,

461

whether or not members in a generation have the same opinion, i.e., “unanimity before deliber-

462

ation,” is identified to be a key factor for determining whether subjects in the generation change

463

their opinions. Finally, the results also demonstrate that a subject with a minority of her initial464

opinion in a generation is 16.2 % more likely to change her opinion, compared with non-minority

465

subjects, at 1 % significance level. In summary, we have identified that area dummy, critical think-466

ing disposition, preunanimity dummy and minority dummy are identified to be the major factors

467

related to individual opinion changes.

468

The experimental results demonstrate that rural subjects choose sustainable option B more469

often than do urban subjects and the number of prosocial members per generation is a key factor.

470

Next, urban subjects are identified to have a wider variety of individual initial opinions than rural

471

subjects, and the individual opinions change through deliberation when subjects in a generation do472

not share the same initial opinion, reflecting that urban subjects change opinions as compared with473

rural ones. Consequently, urban (subjects) generations (support) choose an unsustainable option

474

more often than do rural ones. Overall, tables 6 to 8 illustrate that intragenerational deliberation is475

not successful at inducing individuals and generations to support and choose sustainable opinion

476

B, respectively. Now, with these results, we can answer the two open questions posed at the end

477

of introduction section and section 2.3: (i) Does intragenerational deliberation change individual

478

opinions of rural and urban subjects for an intergenerational problem such as ISD in a different

479

manner? Our answer to the question is that urban subjects change their opinions more often than480

do rural subjects through intragenerational deliberation, and (ii) Do such changes in individual

481

opinions induce generations to resolve ISD in each society? Our answer to the question is that the482

individual opinion changes that mainly occur in urban areas do not work in the direction to enhance

483

intergenerational sustainability. In summary, our results suggest that intragenerational deliberation

22

484

is not effective at resolving intergenerational sustainability.

485

4

Discussion and conclusion

486

This research has examined how intragenerational deliberation changes individual opinions

487

and can be a resolution for intergenerational sustainability dilemma (ISD) in societies by conduct-488

ing the framed field experiment in two Nepalese contexts (urban and rural areas). Our results489

demonstrate that the majority of the generations in both societies support a sustainable option B

490

and the findings are different from Shahrier et al. (2017) where the majority have chosen option A

491

in an urban city, Dhaka. The possible explanation is that life in Dhaka is much more competitive492

to live than in Kathmandu and a majority of urban Bangladeshi people are found to be proself,493

reflecting the fact that Dhaka is the world’s most densely populated city (Shahrier et al., 2016,

494

Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 2017). Cason and Mui (1997) claim that intragroup face-to-face495

communication does not always lead groups to make rational and self-regarding decisions, fol-496

lowing standard economic theory. However, some studies have found that group behaviors can be497

more self-regarding and rational than individual behaviors in the same settings (Dawes et al., 1977,

498

Isaac and Walker, 1988, Bornstein and Ben-Yossef, 1994, Kugler et al., 2012, Charness and Sut-

499

ter, 2012, Cooper and Kuhn, 2016, Meub and Proeger, 2017, Crawford and Harris, 2018, Carbone

500

et al., 2019, Vollstadt and Bohm, 2019). This study shows that how intragenerational delibera-

501

tion affects intergeneration behaviors shall be depending on socioeconomic contexts, cultures and502

norms in people’s daily life (Henrich et al., 2005, 2010b, Fehr and Leibbrandt, 2011).

503

Urban subjects have a wider variety of individual initial opinions and support unsustainable504

options more often than do rural subjects. This result can be compared with the findings of Cason

505

and Mui (1998), Luhan et al. (2009) and Crawford and Harris (2018) showing that social inter-506

action influences group decisions in the way that self-regarding individuals are influential. Our

507

findings show that individual opinions change through deliberation when subjects in a genera-

508

tion do not share the same initial opinion, reflecting that more urban subjects change opinions.

23

509

However, we identify that such changes do not necessarily work in the direction to enhance in-510

tergenerational sustainability, because some people in the group might have strong self-regarding

511

preferences influencing generation decisions. Fischbacher et al. (2001), Chaudhuri (2011) and512

Hauser et al. (2014) show that cooperation among group members increases when they are aware513

of the presence of conditional cooperators. Given these findings, one way to interpret our result is514

that urban generations are likely to identify at least one self-regarding member, but less likely to

515

spot (conditional) cooperators through intragenerational deliberation, choosing an unsustainable516

option.

517

A novelty of our experimental design as compared with Kamijo et al. (2017) and Shahrier et al.

518(2017) is conducting interviews to identify individual opinion changes over the course of delib-

519

eration. The interviews reveal that there is a fundamental difference in terms of how deliberation

520

affects individual opinions between rural and urban areas in ISDG. In rural areas, approximately

521

80 % of subjects consistently support sustainable option B without any opinion change during de-522

liberation, whereas about half of the urban subjects change their opinions. Gachter and Thoni

523(2005) find that cooperation among like mindset people in a group tends to be higher and more

524

stable than that among different mindset people in a group. Being consistent with the result in

525

Gachter and Thoni (2005), we find that urban generations consist of people with a wider variety of526

individual initial opinions, changing their individual opinions and choosing an unsustainable op-527

tion more often than rural ones. It can be interpreted that urban subjects with a variety of opinions

528

face conflicts of interest during intragenerational deliberation and, thus, the deliberation takes long529

as compared to rural subjects. As a result, deliberation does not successfully induce urban subjects

530

and generations to support sustainable option B.

531

This study demonstrates that people’s social preferences such as prosociality are key factors

532

to characterize intergenerational sustainability. Prosocial preferences directly affect people’s deci-

533

sions about how to live, such as unplugging cell phones, using public transport to commute work534

and/or installing a solar panel on a roof for energy (Van Lange et al., 2007). The higher proportion535

of prosocial people are found in rural areas than in urban ones, and there are significant differences

24

536

between these areas in terms of their environment, uses of technologies and social interactions

537

among people. In many cases, basic city life in urban areas such as Kathmandu and Pokhara does538

not require people to have human interactions or intimacy even with their colleagues. In contrast,

539

people in rural areas have close interactions and intimacy with their neighbors owing to their direct

540

dependency on ecology and agriculture-based activities, and a closely-knit rural society such as ru-

541

ral areas in Nepal can be considered a hope for resolving ISD. With these realities, we believe that542

the difference in how people interact with others affects social preferences and behaviors (Char-543

ness and Rabin, 2002, Engelmann and Strobel, 2004, Shahrier et al., 2017). Therefore, practices of544

shared values through education and social interactions shall be one possible approach to enhance545intergeneration sustainability through creating a close-knit society such as permaculture movement546

in some parts of the world (Akhtar et al., 2016, Maye, 2016, Ulbrich and Pahl-Wostl, 2019).

547

Literature has suggested that deliberation leads to fair collective decisions in some class of548

intragenerational problems, particularly when they have an chance to reach Pareto improvement

549(Cardenas, 2000, Cardenas et al., 2000, Blume and Ortmann, 2007, Gerardi and Yariv, 2007, Neil-550

son and Winter, 2008, Gillet et al., 2009, Cason et al., 2012, Ghate et al., 2013, Ruth and Danziger,

551

2016). In this research, it is demonstrated that intragenerational deliberation is not effective at552

assuring intergenerational sustainability in ISDG where there is no room for Pareto improvement.

553

Fochmann et al. (2018) observe that subjects are more concerned about fairness in intragenera-

554

tional distributional problems than in intergenerational ones. With the result, it is so intuitive that555

intragenerational deliberation cannot resolve intergenerational problems such as ISD. In reality,556

people in contemporary societies have failed in resolving some important intergenerational prob-

557

lems, such as climate change, through intragenerational deliberation over time. Therefore, our

558

results imply that some new social mechanisms in addition to or other than intragenerational delib-

559

eration must be designed and instituted if we really want to resolve intergenerational sustainability

560

problems.

561

We note some limitations of the study and directions for future research. First, our experiment562

is instituted under nonoverlapping generations to focus only on the ISD problems. In reality, how-

25

563

ever, generations are overlapping in societies. Future research should be able to be reorganized for564

addressing ISD with overlapping generations. Second, although we find that deliberation does not

565

resolve ISD, future research may be able to find a new type of social mechanisms, potentially with

566

deliberative processes, for resolving ISD. Finally, this research does not fully utilize the contents of567

generations’ discussions for analyzing why individual opinion changes occur in deliberation along

568

with generation decisions. Future research should be able to characterize the detailed dynamic pro-569

cesses for individual opinion changes and generation decisions via qualitative deliberative analysis

570

of discussion contents, as is done in psychology and political science (Brinkmann, 2014).

26

5References

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List of Figures1
2
3

Study regions: Urban and rural areas of Nepal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Instructions for the “slider method” to measuring social value orientation . . . . . 36
A flow chart of procedure for the ISDG experiment and questionnaire survey persession. In the ISDG experiment, each room has two-digit ID with one letter of alphabets and a number, such as G1 or K1. The alphabet letter represents a sequenceID, while the number does the generation ID within the sequence . . . . . . . . . . 37

34

Figure 1: Study regions: Urban and rural areas of Nepal

35

Figure 2: Instructions for the “slider method” to measuring social value orientation

Instructions
In this task you have been randomly paired with another person, whom we will refer to as the other. This other person is someone you
do not know and will remain mutually anonymous. All of your choices are completely confidential. You will be making a series ofdecisions about allocating resources between you and this other person. For each of the following questions, please indicate the
distribution you prefer most by marking the respective position along the midline. You can only make one mark for each question.
Your decisions will yield money for both yourself and the other person. In the example below, a person has chosen to distribute money
so that he/she receives 50 dollars, while the anonymous other person receives 40 dollars.
There are no right or wrong answers, this is all about personal preferences. After you have made your decision, write the resulting
distribution of money on the spaces on the right. As you can see, your choices will influence both the amount of money you receive
as well as the amount of money the other receives.

Example:You receive

Other receives

30

35

80

70

40

60

45

50

50

40

55

30

60

20

65

70

10

0

You

50

Other

40

a

You receive

85

85

85

85

85

85

85

85

85
You

1
Other receives

85

76

68

59

50

41

33

24

15

Other

You receive

85

87

89

91

93

94

96

98

100

You

Other receives

15

19

24

28

33

37

41

46

50

You receive

50

54

59

63

68

72

76

81

85

Other receives

100

98

96

94

93

91

89

87

85

Other

You receive

50

54

59

63

68

72

76

81

85

You

Other receives

100

89

79

68

58

47

36

26

15

You receive

100

94

88

81

75

69

63

56

50

Other receives

50

56

63

69

75

81

88

94

100

You receive

100

98

96

94

93

91

89

87

85

Other receives

50

54

59

63

68

72

76

81

85

2
Other

You

3

4
Other

You

5
Other

You

6

36

Other

Figure 3: A flow chart of procedure for the ISDG experiment and questionnaire survey per session. In the ISDG experiment, each room has two-digit ID with one letter of alphabets and anumber, such as G1 or K1. The alphabet letter represents a sequence ID, while the number does
the generation ID within the sequence

A procedure per session forintergenerational sustainability dilemma game (ISDG)

Gathering andintroduction

K1

G1
ISDG
Individual interview

Room 7

Room 1Room 8

Room 2

K2

G2

Room 9

Room 3Social value
orientation

K3

G3
Room 4G4Sociodemographic
questionnaire
surveyG5Payments

G6

Room 5
Room 637

List of Tables
1
2
3
4
5

6

7
8

Summary statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The frequency and percentage of generation choices between options A and B(percentage in parenthesis) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The frequency and percentage of generation choices between options A and B withrespect to the number of prosocial members in each generation . . . . . . . . . . .
Definitions of the variables included in the regressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Marginal effects of independent variables in the logit regression for generation
choices between options A and B where the dependent variable of generation
choices takes the value 1 with option B, otherwise 0. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The frequency and percentage of change in individual opinions for supporting option “A,” “B,” or “N ” ambivalent/no ideas before and after the deliberation (percentage in parenthesis) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The number of generations with unanimity before and after the deliberation . . . .
Models 1 and 2: Marginal effects of independent variables in the logit regression
for individual opinion change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

38

39
40
41
42

43

44
45
46

39
48.14
0.47

33.77
0.66
15.20
0.37
5.10
0.62
3.03

7.12
0.50

11.38
0.47
3.42
0.50
8.05
0.48
0.94

49.00
1.00

32.50
0.00
16.00
1.00
3.40
1.00
3.00

65.00
1.00

56.00
1.00
18.00
1.00
90.00
1.00
5.00

47.62
0.62

33.27
0.44
10.18
0.88
0.31
0.47
3.15

6.45
0.48

11.54
0.50
2.86
0.33
4.05
0.51
1.13

48.00
1.00

30.5
0.00
10.00
1.00
1.50
0.00
3.00

10 “SVO” is a dummy variable that takes a value of 1 when a subject is prosocial and 0 otherwise.

among 1 “strongly disagree,” 2 “disagree,” 3 “neutral,” 4 “agree” and 5 “strongly agree.”

9 Critical thinking disposition is the summation of rates from 1 to 5 over 13 items, and the theoretical range is 13-65. In each item, a question is posed, and a subject is asked to choose

8 Family size is the number of family members.

7 Single family is a dummy variable that takes the value of 1 if the participant is in a single family structure and 0 otherwise.

6 Monthly income is given in Nepalese rupees (NPR).

25.00 65.00
0.00 1.00

16.00 66.00
0.00 1.00
1.00 18.00
0.00 1.00
0.50 30.00
0.00 1.00
1.00 5.00

Rural (62 generations,186 subjects)
Mean SD Median Min Max

5 Agricultural involvement is a dummy variable that takes the value 1 when a subject is stably employed or engaged in the agricultural sector and 0 otherwise.

4 Education represents years of schooling.

23.00
0.00

18.00
0.00
5.00
0.00
1.00
0.00
1.00

Urban (59 generations, 177 subjects)
Mean SD1 Median Min Max

3 A dummy variable that takes the value 1 when the subject is male and 0 otherwise .

2 Age is a continuous variable given in years.

1 “SD” stands for standard deviation.

Critical thinking disposition9
SVO10

Cognitive & psychological variables

Age2
Gender3
Education4
Agricultural involvement5Monthly income (in NPR 10,000)6
Single family7
Family size8

Variables

Table 1: Summary statistics

40
Total

121 (100.00 %)59 (100.00 %) 62 (100.00 %)Total
31 (25.62 %)
90 (74.38 %)

21 (35.59 %)
38 (64.41 %)

A
B

Rural
10 (16.13 %)
52 (83.87 %)Urban

Generation choices between options A and B

Area

Table 2: The frequency and percentage of generation choices between options A and B (percentage in parenthesis)

Table 3: The frequency and percentage of generation choices between options A and B withrespect to the number of prosocial members in each generation# of prosocial members
per generation

Urban

Rural

A

B

A

B
0 (0.00 %)
10 (16.13 %)
25 (40.32 %)
17 (27.42 %)

0
1
2
3

5 (8.48 %)3 (5.10 %)
10 (16.95 %) 10 (16.95 %)
6 (10.17 %) 23 (40.00 %)0 (0.00 %)2 (3.39 %)

7 (11.29 %)
3 (4.84 %)0 (0.00 %)0 (0.00 %)Subtotal

21 (35.59 %) 38 (64.41 %)

10 (16.13 %) 52 (83.87 %)Total

59 (100 %)62 (100 %)

41

42

SVO
GenderAgricultural involvement
Education
Single familyMonthly income

Minority

Preunanimity

Critical thinking disposition

Variables at individual level
Individual opinion change

Variables at generation level
Generation choices between options
A and B
# of prosocial members
in a generation
Area dummy
Gender
Education
Monthly income
Single family
Agricultural involvement
Previous generation decision
Percentage of choosing option B
in sequence history

Variables

A dummy variable that takes 1 when a subject changes her individual opinion to
support A, B or N before and after deliberation or over a course of deliberation.
A variable that represents the summation of rates from 1 to 5 over 13 items of questions.
each subject answers in her questionnaire and the theoretical range is 13-65
A dummy variable that takes 1 when the subject belongs to the generation in which
all members supported the same option before deliberation, otherwise 0.
A dummy variable that takes 1 when the subject have a different
opinion from other two members in a generation, otherwise 0.
A dummy variable that takes 1 when the subject is identified as prosocial, otherwise 0.
A dummy variable that takes 1 when the subject is male, otherwise 0.
A dummy variable that takes 1 when the subject engages in agriculture sector otherwise 0.
A variable that represents the subject’s years of schooling.
A dummy variable that takes 1 if the subject has a single family, otherwise 0.
A variable that represents monthly household income.

A dummy variable that takes 1 if the generation is from the rural area, otherwise 0.
A variable that represents the number of males in each generation.
A variable that represents average years of schooling over three subjects in each generation.
A variable that represents an average household income of three subjects in each generation.
A variable that represents a number of members in a generation that have a single family structure.
A variable that represents a number of members in a generation who engage in agriculture.
A dummy variable that takes 1 if the previous generation chooses option B, otherwise 0.
A variable that represents the percentage of previous generations that chose option B in a sequence.

A number of prosocial members in each generation.

A dummy variable that takes 1 if the generation choose option B, otherwise 0.

Definitions of variables included in regressions

Table 4: Definitions of the variables included in the regressions

43
121

Model 10.142**(0.065)0.215***(0.033)Model 20.192*(0.110)0.211***(0.034)−0.010(0.047)0.016(0.016)−0.000(0.000)0.014(0.040)(−0.006)(0.010)−0.009(0.042)−0.010(0.084)−0.030(0.090)102***significant at 1 % level, **significant at 5 % level and *significant at 10 % level.
The Wald χ2 statistics are 41.47 and 34.44 in models 1 and 2, respectively.

Sample size

Percentage of choosing option B in sequence history

Previous generation’s decision

Agricultural involvement

Critical thinking disposition

Single familyMonthly income

Education

Gender# of prosocial members in a generation

Variables
Area dummy (Urban areas = 0)

Table 5: Marginal effects of independent variables in the logit regression for generation choices between options A and B where thedependent variable of generation choices takes the value 1 with option B, otherwise 0.

Table 6: The frequency and percentage of change in individual opinions for supporting option “A,”
“B,” or “N ” ambivalent/no ideas before and after the deliberation (percentage in parenthesis)
Areas

Individual opinion change

Urban

Rural

AA
AB
AN
BB
BA
BN
NN
NA
NB

30 (16.95 %)
12 (6.78 %)
9 (5.08 %)99 (55.93 %)
11 (6.21 %)
9 (5.08 %)
2 (1.13 %)
3 (1.69 %)2 (1.13 %)

17 (9.14 %)
2 (1.08 %)
2 (1.08 %)
146 (78.49 %)
4 (2.15 %)
10 (5.38 %)0 (0.00 %)1 (0.54 %)
4 (2.15 %)Total

177 (100.00 %)186 (100.00 %)

44

45

30
46

91
75

Before
After

121
121

Total

39 generation out of 59 generation have unanimity
before deliberation in urban, whereas 52 out of 62
generation in rural areas.

Non-unanimity

Unanimity

Deliberation

Table 7: The number of generations with unanimity before and after the deliberation

46

363

Model 1−0.101**(0.040)−0.010***(0.003)−0.101**(0.045)0.162***(0.060)−0.020(−0.042)0.063(0.046)−0.001(−0.002)−0.010(0.007)0.000(0.000)−0.014(0.021)
0.015(0.051)331

Model 2−0.108*(0.060)−0.010***(0.003)−0.105**(0.049)0.141**(0.065)***significant at 1 % level; **significant at 5 % level; *significant at 10 % level.
The Wald χ2 statistics are 43.06 and 42.28 in models 1 and 2, respectively, and they are significant at 1 % level.

Sample size

Agricultural involvement

Family size

Monthly income

Education (Years of schooling)

Age

Gender (Base group = female)

Including other socio-demographic variables in model 2
SVO dummy (Proself = 0)

Minority

Preunanimity

Critical thinking disposition

Variables
Area dummy (Urban areas = 0)

Table 8: Models 1 and 2: Marginal effects of independent variables in the logit regression for individual opinion change