Uncertain future payoffs and irreversible costs characterize investment in climate change adaptation and mitigation. Under these conditions, it is relevant to analyze investment decisions in a real options framework, as this approach takes into account the economic value associated with investment time flexibility. In this paper, we provide an overview of the literature adopting a real option approach to analyze investment in climate change adaptation and mitigation, and examine how the uncertain impacts of climate change on the condition of the human environment, risk preferences, and strategic interactions among decisions-makers have been modeled. We found that the complex nature of uncertainties associated with climate change is typically only partially taken into account and that the analysis is usually limited to decisions taken by individual risk neutral profit maximizers. Our findings call for further research to fill the identified gaps.

气候变化适应和减缓投资的特点是未来回报的不确定性和不可逆转的成本。在这些条件下，在实物期权框架中分析投资决策是相关的，因为这种方法考虑了与投资时间灵活性相关的经济价值。本文综述了采用实物期权方法分析气候变化适应和减缓投资的文献，并考察了气候变化对人类环境状况、风险偏好以及企业间战略互动的不确定性影响。决策者已被建模。我们发现，与气候变化相关的不确定性的复杂性通常只被部分考虑，并且分析通常仅限于个人风险中性利润最大化者做出的决策。我们的研究结果需要进一步的研究来填补已发现的空白。