Cooperation and cognition gaps for salinity: A field experiment of information provision in urban and rural areas of Bangladesh

Salinity along with climate change has devastating effects on people's life, and thus, adaptation and mitigation strategies are needed to cope with its risks. Literature establishes an existence of cooperation and cognition gaps due to informational and residential differences that make the strategies' implementation difficult. While little is known about how such gaps can be reduced, therefore, we examine the effect of information provision on people's cooperation and cognition for reducing salinity problems in urban and rural areas. It is hypothesized that information provision about salinity through some lecture is effective at reducing cooperation and cognition gaps among people. We conduct a field experiment, collecting data on donations, prosociality, cognitive and sociodemographic factors of 900 subjects from one urban and two rural areas in Bangladesh. A climate donation game is instituted to measure cooperation among people where they are asked to donate to salinity risk reduction with or without the information provision. The analysis shows that people who have prosocial orientation and perception of human-induced climate change donate more than do those who do not, and urban people tend to donate less than do rural people. However, urban people are identified to increase their donations by receiving the information provision much more than do rural people. These results can be interpreted that urban people become more cooperative in response to the lecture than do rural people, and cooperation gaps become smaller due to a change in cognition via information provision. Overall, the results demonstrate that informational and education programs for salinity and climate change shall be effective and prioritized especially in urban areas to enhance cooperation for sustainable development goals through affecting people's cognition.