Public response to heterogeneous environmental policies: scenario-based experiments from interest appeal, implementation costs, and commitment mechanism

ABSTRACT

Under the background of “carbon peak and carbon neutrality,” the development of public low-carbon behavior is an important guarantee for environmental improvement. The in-depth study of public response mechanism to environmental policies could effectively promote the green transformation of public lifestyle. This paper explores public response to heterogeneous environmental policies through scenario-based experiments, and uses multiple regression analysis to examine factors and mechanism that influence public response. The results show that different policy guidance, interest appeal, implementation cost, and commitment mechanism could affect public response to policies, and these effects also differ among individuals with different environmental responsibility, policy awareness, time preference, and peer influence. This study portrays the dynamic change in public attitudes toward environmental policies from both policy perspective and public perspective. It also provides theoretical basis for improving public motivation to environmental policies and enhancing the effective interface between environmental policies and green behavior.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental policy response
• public green behavior
• scenario-based experiment
• interest appeal
• implementation cost
• commitment mechanism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data will be made available on request.

Ethical approval

Ethical review and approval was not required for the study on human participants in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. Written informed consent for participation was not required for this study in accordance with the national legislation and the institutional requirements.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China under Grant [23FJYB029]