Focusing climate negotiations on a uniform common commitment can promote cooperation

Significance Climate change and other threats to modern societies require international cooperation. Utilizing a laboratory experiment game theoretical analysis, we find that the success of negotiations promote cooperation strongly depends on kind commitment negotiated. In context climate policy, our findings indicate individual commitments (as negotiated in Paris Agreement) complex common Kyoto Protocol) tend have only limited promoting Shifting negotiation focus uniform commitment, such as minimum carbon price, may potentially foster more ambitious thus help mitigating change.