In a recent publication in Ecological Economics, Stephan Geschwind and Johann Graf Lambsdorff explore how resource scarcity influences human behavior. They conduct a novel lab experiment that simulates an environment with exploitable resources to study the extent of hostility. The study finds that hostility increased towards players responsible for overexploiting resources, i.e., when scarcity was human-induced. Conversely, environmentally induced scarcity mitigated hostility. These findings offer important insights for policymakers. They suggest that the climate crisis may escalate or mitigate hostility and violence, depending on whether it is perceived as being caused by human actions or natural factors. The publication can be found here.