Bootstrapping Sustainability Norms in Cultural–Institutional Coevolutionary Systems

Abstract

To better understand the potential and interdependence of complex goal structures like the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, we construct a framework for studying the co-evolution of culture and institutions in which behaviors and outcomes in one domain influence the returns to behaviors in other domains through **behavioral spillovers** and **domain externalities**. For example, in our framework, economic well-being depends on behaviors in environmental domains. This assumption is consistent with long-standing empirical research showing interdependence across the seventeen United Nations Sustainability Goals. Within this framework, we demonstrate the potential for multiple stable configurations, including some that are far from efficient. Second, we show that increasing the magnitudes of behavioral spillovers and domain externalities has differing effects on the nature of the stable configurations supported. Third, we show how policies that reward particular actions function similarly to domain externalities and not behavioral spillovers.