Better us later than me now —: Regulatee-size and time-inconsistency as determinants of demand for environmental policies

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › fagfællebedømt

  • Marius Alt
To adequately design and implement effective environmental policies, it is paramount for policymakers to understand preferences for regulatory instruments and the factors that facilitate their implementation. In this study, I experimentally investigate two possible facilitators of the implementation of environmental policies. I assess (1) whether interventions are demanded as commitment devices if their implementation is delayed to the future, and (2) whether the demand for interventions increases if the policy not only affects the self but also others. The results show that a large fraction of individuals demand regulation. Particularly, I find evidence that participants who are sophisticated about their time-inconsistent prosocial preferences use interventions to commit to future pro-environmental behavior. When the intervention is also imposed on other participants, paternalistic conditional cooperators increase their demand most strongly. In a welfare analysis, I show that particularly delay-effects entail large welfare gains, whereas imposing policies also on other individuals can have negative welfare effects in the case of stringent policies.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
Artikelnummer102144
TidsskriftJournal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics
Vol/bind108
Antal sider23
ISSN2214-8043
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 2024

Bibliografisk note

Funding Information:
My thanks to Lara Bartels, Alexander Dzionara, Toke Reinholt Fosgaard, and Madeline Werthschulte, and seminar and conferences audiences of EAERE 2021, CNEE-workshop, 6th EEFE-workshop, and VfS annual conference 2021 for constructive and very helpful comments. The project was made possible through funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research ( FKZ 01LA1825A , 01LP1928B ) and the University of Copenhagen. This experiment has been registered at AEA RCT Registry and reviewed by the institutional review board of the Ethical Committee of SCIENCE and SUND at the University of Copenhagen.

Funding Information:
My thanks to Lara Bartels, Alexander Dzionara, Toke Reinholt Fosgaard, and Madeline Werthschulte, and seminar and conferences audiences of EAERE 2021, CNEE-workshop, 6th EEFE-workshop, and VfS annual conference 2021 for constructive and very helpful comments. The project was made possible through funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (FKZ 01LA1825A, 01LP1928B) and the University of Copenhagen. This experiment has been registered at AEA RCT Registry and reviewed by the institutional review board of the Ethical Committee of SCIENCE and SUND at the University of Copenhagen.

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