On Individualism and Environmental Quality

ABSTRACT Using an individualism index for up to 105 countries across three decades, we find that a one‐standard‐deviation increase is associated with 1.73 additional metric tons of CO 2 per capita, about 30% of the sample mean. The association is positive in every decade and remains similar after continent fixed effects, alternative cultural controls, jackknifing, and bootstrap inference. For fine particulate matter, whose harms are predominantly local or regional rather than global, the baseline association reverses sign. The conventional view therefore holds for the global commons but not for local pollution, as collective‐action reasoning predicts once the spatial incidence of harm is taken seriously. Our estimate is the reduced‐form association between a cultural trait measured in 1968–1973 and outcomes decades later; decompositions indicate that the association is substantially accounted for by the higher incomes and more effective bureaucracies associated with individualism, whereas equivalence testing shows that specifications conditioning on these channels are too imprecise to establish the absence of a residual association.