Mechanism Design, Fairness
The Climate Relocation Lottery
The Climate Relocation Lottery is a Mechanism Design and Fairness scenario. The core lesson: When public help is scarce, any allocation mechanism encodes values about who deserves rescue. The government receives international funding to relocate 50,000 people from the most flood-vulnerable coastal areas. But 2 million people qualify for relocation. DecisionPlay maps the players, payoffs, and equilibrium dynamics that shape how this situation typically resolves.
The situation
The government receives international funding to relocate 50,000 people from the most flood-vulnerable coastal areas. But 2 million people qualify for relocation. You're designing the selection criteria. Prioritize by vulnerability, economic productivity, random lottery, or community cohesion?
Background
Climate relocation is a mechanism design problem with no neutral answer. Every selection rule implicitly values some lives and futures over others. Vulnerability-based selection saves the most at-risk households but may relocate those with the fewest resources to rebuild in a new location. Productivity-based selection optimizes economic recovery but systematically privileges households that are already more advantaged. Random lotteries are procedurally fair but randomly cruel, they may separate families and destroy community networks. Community-based selection preserves social fabric but may exclude isolated individuals who lack the group membership that confers eligibility.
What this reveals
Allocation mechanisms encode values
There is no neutral way to decide who gets help when help is scarce. Every mechanism, scoring formulas, lotteries, community selection, productivity criteria, operationalizes a moral theory about whose vulnerability counts, whose future matters more, and what makes a life worth protecting from climate risk. The mechanism designer's choices are moral choices, whether or not they're framed as technical ones. The most dangerous mechanisms are those whose value assumptions are invisible.
How to counter it: Make the value assumptions explicit before building the mechanism. Ask: whose interests does this criterion protect, and whose does it deprioritize? Then ask: is that the trade-off we intended to make? Transparent criteria allow communities and advocates to contest the values embedded in selection, which is both more democratic and more likely to produce a mechanism that communities will trust enough to participate in.
A question to sit with
When public help is scarce, what makes one family more deserving than another?
Frequently asked questions
- What game theory concept does The Climate Relocation Lottery illustrate?
- The Climate Relocation Lottery illustrates Mechanism Design, Fairness. When public help is scarce, any allocation mechanism encodes values about who deserves rescue.
- What is the situation in The Climate Relocation Lottery?
- The government receives international funding to relocate 50,000 people from the most flood-vulnerable coastal areas. But 2 million people qualify for relocation. You're designing the selection criteria.
- What does The Climate Relocation Lottery reveal about how people decide?
- Allocation mechanisms encode values. There is no neutral way to decide who gets help when help is scarce. Every mechanism, scoring formulas, lotteries, community selection, productivity criteria, operationalizes a moral theory about whose vulnerability counts, whose future matters more, and what makes a life worth protecting from climate risk. The mechanism designer's choices are moral choices, whether or not they're framed as technical ones. The most dangerous mechanisms are those whose value assumptions are invisible.
- How do you avoid the trap in The Climate Relocation Lottery?
- Make the value assumptions explicit before building the mechanism. Ask: whose interests does this criterion protect, and whose does it deprioritize? Then ask: is that the trade-off we intended to make? Transparent criteria allow communities and advocates to contest the values embedded in selection, which is both more democratic and more likely to produce a mechanism that communities will trust enough to participate in.
- What is the research behind The Climate Relocation Lottery?
- Climate relocation is a mechanism design problem with no neutral answer. Every selection rule implicitly values some lives and futures over others. Vulnerability-based selection saves the most at-risk households but may relocate those with the fewest resources to rebuild in a new location.
- How long does The Climate Relocation Lottery take to play?
- About 9 min, at advanced difficulty, across 4 decision points. It runs in your browser with no account and no sign-in.
Keep exploring
More Policy Lab scenarios, or browse all scenarios. New to this? Start with how DecisionPlay works or the game theory glossary.
Topics: policy-lab, climate-adaptation, mechanism-design