Government effectiveness, regulatory compliance and public preference for marine policy instruments. An experimental approach

Democratic governance of natural resources requires democratic accountability. To explore the ante- cedence of public preference for marine policy instruments, this study revisit previous research findings linking inefficient political institutions to demand for more coercive policy tools. Thus, the aim of this study is to investigates the influence of 1) effectiveness of authorities and 2) regulatory compliance among resources users on the public preference for marine policy instruments. A 2 2 between-subject scenario experimental approach was utilised, where the effectiveness of authorities and regulatory compliance of shrimpers varied. Respondents were asked to rank three different marine policy instru- ment: 1) tougher penalties for noncompliance, 2) dialogue between authorities and resources users and, 3) tradable quotas. The results from the scenario experiment demonstrate that ineffective authorities increase the preference for tougher penalties. A potential explanation for this finding is that regulation implies less discretion, and hence regulation is preferred when public institutions are inefficient

Reward or Punish? Understanding Preferences toward Economic or Regulatory Instruments in a Cross-National Perspective

This study is interested in cross-national differences in public preferences toward different forms of political steering. Using data from the International Social Survey Programme it was found that there is quite substantial variation between countries in policy preferences. It is suggested that this variation can be explained by the variation in the quality of public institutions (i.e. Quality of Government, QoG). Low QoG is associated with a preference for coercive regulatory instruments and an aversion toward reward-based instruments. The explanation provided is that low QoG is correlated with low social trust, which produces suspicion of defection and an urge to punish free-riders with strong or coercive instruments. Meanwhile, the aversion toward reward-based instruments decreases as the level of QoG increases. The public administration then has the bureaucratic capacity to deal with policies that demand bureaucratic discretion and actors are less likely to free-ride, generating a preference for reward-based incentives and less need for regulation

The contingent effects of environmental concern and ideology: institutional context and people’s willingness to pay environmental taxes

Environmental taxes are often argued to be key to more effective environmental protection. People’s willingness to pay such taxes in contexts with varying levels of quality of government (QoG) is investigated. Applying multilevel analyses on data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) and the QoG Institute, links between environmental concern, ideology, and QoG are explored. The results show that people who state that they are concerned about environmental issues and live in high QoG countries are more willing than people in low QoG countries to pay environmental taxes. Moreover, people in low QoG countries holding leftist political value orientations are less willing to pay environmental taxes than rightists and other value groups. Environmental concern and leftist political ideology are more important drivers of public support for environmental taxes in high QoG countries than in low QoG countries

On the preconditions for large-scale collective action

The phenomenon of collective action and the origin of collective action problems have been extensively and systematically studied in the social sciences. Yet, while we have substantial knowledge about the factors promoting collective action at the local level, we know far less about how these insights travel to large-scale collective action problems. Such problems, however, are at the heart of humanity’s most pressing challenges, including climate change, large-scale natural resource depletion, biodiversity loss, nuclear proliferation, antibiotic resistance due to overconsumption of antibiotics, and pollution. In this paper, we suggest an analytical framework that captures the theoretical understanding of preconditions for large-scale collective action. This analytical framework aims at supporting future empirical analyses of how to cope with and overcome larger-scale collective action problems. More specifically, we (i) define and describe the main characteristics of a large-scale collective action problem and (ii) explain why voluntary and, in particular, spontaneous large-scale collective action among individual actors becomes more improbable as the collective action problem becomes larger, thus demanding interventions by an external authority (a third party) for such action to be generated. Based on this, we (iii) outline an analytical framework that illustrates the connection between third-party interventions and large-scale collective action. We conclude by suggesting avenues for future research.</p

Policy Options for Sustainable Food Consumption – Review and Recommendations for Sweden. Mistra Sustainable Consumption report 1:10

The environmental impact of the average Swede’s diet exceeds the planetary limits for the food system in most areas. Over 15% of consumption-based greenhouse gas emissions come from food in Sweden. Sweden’s agricultural landscape has the largest proportion of European Red List species of all landscape types in Sweden and food imports are associated with high rates of land use, pesticides and veterinary antibiotics in other countries. Our diet is also not sustainable in terms of health – for example, 51% of Swedes are overweight and many of the most common diseases and causes of death are linked to diet.This report identifies and discusses policy instruments that the state and other public actors could introduce to steer food consumption in Sweden towards a more environmentally sustainable diet. Seventeen policy instruments operating either through knowledge and support, changes in relative prices, or regulation and requirements have been identified and previous research on policy effectiveness, costs and acceptance has been mapped out in a way that we hope is clear and easy to understand. Based on the current state of knowledge, we have formulated three recommendations on what public actors could do to accelerate the transition to a more sustainable food system.1.Intensify work in the public sector2.Develop national targets for sustainable food consumption3.Develop and implement effective and attractive policy instrument packagesThe mapping and analysis show that there is a need for research on policy instruments for environmentally sustainable food consumption, particularly when it comes to combinations of instruments. However, there is a sufficient evidence base for the immediate development and implementation of policy instruments to deal with the climate, environmental and health impacts of food. A focus on targets and policy instruments in the food area, as outlined above, is also fully in line with the EU’s new Farm-to-Fork strategy. The policy instruments discussed in the report can probably achieve only part of the huge, transformative changes required to limit the production and consumption of food to planetary limits, but a central issue is how to do this. Part of the answer lies in a change in food consumption and here we believe that we know where the answer lies: public actors ought to develop and implement a variety of policy instruments and systematically evaluate them – it is in this more large-scale implementation that the real need for research lies. The challenge of reducing the environmental impact of food consumption in Sweden is considerable, but there are good opportunities for nudging the trend towards more environment-friendly and health-friendly sustainable food consumption through the deployment of new policy instruments

Large-scale collective action to avoid an Amazon tipping point - key actors and interventions

The destruction of the Amazon is a major global environmental issue, not only because of greenhouse gas emissions or direct impacts on biodiversity and livelihoods, but also due to the forest\u27s role as a tipping element in the Earth System. With nearly a fifth of the Amazon already lost, there are already signs of an imminent forest dieback process that risks transforming much of the rainforest into a drier ecosystem, with climatic implications across the globe. There is a large body of literature on the underlying drivers of Amazon deforestation. However, insufficient attention has been paid to the behavioral and institutional microfoundations of change. Fundamental issues concerning cooperation, as well as the mechanisms facilitating or hampering such actions, can play a much more central role in attempts to unravel and address Amazon deforestation. We thus present the issue of preventing the Amazon biome from crossing a biophysical tipping point as a large-scale collective action problem. Drawing from collective action theory, we apply a novel analytical framework on Amazon conservation, identifying six variables that synthesize relevant collective action stressors and facilitators: information, accountability, harmony of interests, horizontal trust, knowledge about consequences, and sense of responsibility. Drawing upon literature and data, we assess Amazon deforestation and conservation through our heuristic lens, showing that while growing transparency has made information availability a collective action facilitator, lack of accountability, distrust among actors, and little sense of responsibility for halting deforestation remain key stressors. We finalize by discussing interventions that can help break the gridlock

The Multiple Dilemmas of Environmental Protection: The Effects of Generalized and Political Trust on the Acceptance of Environmental Policy Instruments

With different environmental policy instruments (EPIs) that target individual citizens, the state can change activities or behaviors that have negative environmental consequences. However, EPIs are not likely to be implemented or have the intended effects unless people support these policies since a lack of support may affect willingness to comply, and politicians may not even introduce them due to the risk of loss in electoral support. Previous studies have suggested that political and generalized trust are important explanatory factors in EPI support. On an individual level and at least in some contexts, investigations have found that political and generalized trust generate more positive attitudes and higher acceptance of EPIs. There is, however, a lack of comparative studies. The effects of political and generalized trust on EPI support are investigated in this thesis by studying cross-national differences in EPI preference. By using a comparative design, it is possible to study not only perceptions of whether public institutions are trustworthy and whether we find those effects in different countries, but also the effects of living in a society with more or less effective or corrupt public institutions. It is suggested that people support different kinds of EPIs in different contexts. The data used are three international surveys and a Swedish mail survey. The results suggest several effects of trust on preferences for policies. One could be described as the coercion effect, where people with low trust choose more coercive policies in order to punish defectors; the second is the bureaucratic discretion effect, where people accept certain kinds of policies (typically economic instruments) only when the bureaucracy has a potential to deliver; third is an effect of trust in others, for people who do not trust others are not likely to choose certain policies when the risk of free-riding is high; and fourth is an indirect effect, for trust affects people’s willingness to perform environmental action, which in turn affects policy preferences.¬¬ In conclusion, as political and generalized trust are important explanatory factors in EPI support, we should expect the potential for such policy instruments to vary quite significantly across countries

Cooperation or Punishment. The Effects of Trust on Government Regulation and Taxation.

For many economists government intervention is linked to low levels of interpersonal trust and corruption, while, on the contrary, for many political scientists, government intervention is associ-ated to high trust and low corruption. The goal of this paper is to reconcile these contrasting find-ings by distinguishing the differing effects of trust over two alternative types of government inter-vention: regulation and taxation. Low-trust individuals demand more governmental regulation but less government taxation. We test the hypotheses by focusing on a particular policy – i.e. environ-mental policy – where governments use different mixes of regulatory and tax mechanisms, and for which we have data on both trust in others (interpersonal trust) and trust in public institutions (in-stitutional trust). The main finding is that those individuals with low trust (both interpersonal and institutional trust) tend to demand, ceteris paribus, more governmental regulation of the environ-ment and, but are less inclined to pay higher taxes to protect the environment. We also find that the effect of institutional trust is stronger than the effect of interpersonal trust, which puts previous studies in a perspective

The large-scale collective action dilemma of recycling: Exploring the role of trust

Household recycling contributes to environmental sustainability goals by limiting the extraction of natural resources. Previous literature has mapped out several factors, mainly at the individual level, that tend to increase individuals’ tendency to recycle. Inherent features of household recycling propose however that a large-scale collective action framework should be relevant when analyzing this activity, which suggests that trust, especially institutional trust, should increase recycling frequency. This paper consequently does three things: firstly, it examines whether institutional trust is linked to individuals’ tendency to recycle, secondly, it tests the role of generalized trust; and third, the paper provides a new theoretical approach when testing the link, which would result in a positive relationship of institutional trust on recycling behavior but with a negative relationship among the most trusting individuals (i.e. a curvilinear overall relationship). Support is found for a positive link between generalized trust, institutional trust, and Quality of Government on reported household recycling. However, we find no support for a curvilinear relationship. Findings suggest that institutional trust has a role to play in household recycling, but that this relationship should benefit from further examination

Seeing the State: The Implications of Transparency for Societal Accountability

International organizations and NGOs promote transparency as a necessary condition for enhancing accountability and curbing corruption. Transparency is predicted to deter corruption in part by increasing the opportunities for inter-institutional oversight and formal accountability, but also by expanding the possibilities for societal accountability, i.e. for citizens to monitor, scrutinize and hold public office holders accountable. While the societal accountability mechanism linking transparency and good government is often implied, it contains a number of assumptions seldom examined empirically. This study theoretically unpacks and explores empirically how transparency may influence good government via the mechanism of societal accountability, that is, by inciting reactions and responses from citizens. Using data compiled by the Quality of Government Institute, we show that increased transparency prompts different public reactions in countries with comparatively higher levels of corruption than in low corrupt countries. The data indicate that in corrupt countries, transparency, counter to many predictions, erodes political trust but stimulates civic engagement. The findings suggest that transparency may incite discontent and civic mobilization in the short term, contributing to greater accountability and better government in the long term