How to Treat Gossip in Internet Public Carbon Emission Reduction Projects?

Abstract

Ant Forest is an internet public carbon emission reduction project jointly initiated by the government and enterprises and has successfully made a huge contribution to carbon reduction. As an online project, Ant Forest is more likely to receive public attention and discussion, which will undoubtedly incur a vast amount of gossip. In addition, unlike the offline acquaintance society, people need to frequently deal with heterogeneous interpersonal relationships online, which complicates the role of gossip. In this background, the impact of gossip on internet public carbon emission reduction projects and how to deal with gossip to increase public participation are important research questions. We study the above questions through public goods game. We propose three alternative coping mechanisms of gossip namely: punishment only (PO), punishment with reputation compensation (PR) and punishment with monetary compensation (PM). The research results are shown as follows: Firstly, although the effect of gossip on advancing public participation in public carbon emission reduction projects under heterogeneous interpersonal relationships is inferior to that under homogeneous interpersonal relationship, it is undeniable that gossip also could effectively promote public to take part in internet public carbon emission reduction projects. Secondly, compared with the other two mechanisms, the mechanism PM is the most effective way to advance public participation in the internet public carbon emission reduction projects. Finally, there is optimal tolerance degree, penalty time and rebirth coefficient to maximize the promotion effect in the PM. Our research demonstrates that gossip has a positive significance for internet public emission reduction projects, and we also provide policy makers with corresponding suggestions to advance public participation.