Essays on the Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change
Abstract
Climate change is currently one of the most important challenges for global society. Expected effects of climate change include changes in climate patterns and disasters that affect wellbeing through changes in consumption and production levels, individual preferences and beliefs, and direct exposure to climate conditions. Mitigation of and adaptation measures to climate change are aimed at preserving the individual and social welfare in society. The latter refers to measures that allow individuals to adjust to changing climate conditions. Although research in mitigation of climate change has considerably increased recently, studies on the economics of adaptation to climate change remain scant. This dissertation provides evidence on individual mechanisms for adaptation to climate change from the lenses of economics. I study how climate conditions affect people’s wellbeing and consumption patterns, and how climate disasters influence individual preferences. Specifically, these studies look at individual economic responses to climate conditions and climate disasters.
The three studies in this dissertation cover the following topics: 1) The effect of climate on residential water demand, which constitutes an indirect effect of climate conditions on individual welfare through changes in consumption patterns. Temperature has a large and significant effect on residential water demand, whereas precipitation and humidity have a small effect. Temperature also has a stronger effect on water demand among low-income households. 2) The effect of climate on happiness to approach the exposure effect of climate on individuals’ comfort, which constitutes a direct effect on welfare. Climate constitutes an important determinant of people’s overall and health happiness after controlling for economic and social conditions. While the effect of heat on overall happiness adopts an inverted-U shape, the effect of heat on health happiness can be represented by a U-shape. And, 3) the effect of climate disasters on people’s religiosity that constitutes an effect on individual preferences and that refers to the role of religion as a mechanism to cope with adversity in disasters. The frequency of disasters and their impacts have different effects on religious preferences: while the number and the economic costs of disasters erode religion preferences, human losses increase the intensity of their religious preferences among religious individuals.
Description
Keywords
Education--Social Sciences, Economics
Citation
Zapata, O. (2017). Essays on the Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/25950