How Trust in Governments Influences the Acceptance of Environmental Taxes

Kollmann, Andrea; Reichl, Johannes

doi:10.7551/mitpress/9780262029247.003.0004

Cited by 15 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…These results show the importance of investigating and taking into consideration the specific political situation of a country and trust in different policymaking branches; while Italians put more weight on the suggestions of national or EU opinion leaders, the Swiss prefer the advice of their local leaders. These findings are in line with the analysis of Kollmann & Reichl (2015) who find a strong interdependency of trust in the governmental institutions and a population's willingness to accept environmental policies associated with tax increases. Their analysis also shows Switzerland as one of the nations with highest confidence in their local government, with Italy exhibiting less trust in local governments.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 88%

Designing local renewable energy communities to increase social acceptance: Evidence from a choice experiment in Austria, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland

et al. 2019

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Low social acceptance to new energy infrastructure may hinder achieving the European Union's goal that 32% of energy consumption come from renewable sources. A vast literature is available on the social acceptance of specific renewable energy technologies, but existing research lacks assessments regarding comprehensive transformations to local energy systems. Moreover, the promising energy storage technology power-togas has not yet been addressed in acceptance studies. This paper fills these gaps in the acceptance literature by analysing data from a choice experiment survey with 2,000 respondents across four nations (Germany, Austria, Italy, and Switzerland). Results from the analysis show that solar farms and power-togas infrastructure increase acceptance of local energy communities, while wind farms have an ambiguous effect, and gas power plants and power lines decrease acceptance. The derived willingness to pay estimates can be used by energy policymakers to ensure acceptable price changes accompany local energy system changes. Additionally, we investigate whether stated support from political opinion leaders at the local, national, and EU levels can increase the acceptance of renewable energy systems. Results suggest that Italian choices are influenced by the opinions of EU and national governmental bodies, and that Swiss choices are sensitive to the opinions of local politicians.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 88%

Designing local renewable energy communities to increase social acceptance: Evidence from a choice experiment in Austria, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland

et al. 2019

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“…A larger group of studies on environmental policy attitudes expand the conceptualization and measurement of trust in government beyond a mere focus on politicians to include a broader set of actors and institutions, such as people in government and government authorities more broadly (e.g. Fairbrother, 2016;Harring & Jagers, 2013;Kollmann & Reichl, 2015;Konisky et al, 2008). While these studies show that trust is associated with a greater willingness to support environmental (e.g.…”

Section: Trust In Government and Support For Environmental Policiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who do you trust? How trust in partial and impartial government institutions influences climate policy attitudes

Kulin

Sevä

2020

Climate Policy

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While previous research shows that environmental policy attitudes depend on trust in government, existing studies have either focused exclusively on trust in politicians and democratic institutions (political trust) or conflated such measures with trust in a wider range of impartial government institutions and actors. In this study, we distinguish between trust in partial institutions that enact laws and policies on the one hand, and trust in impartial institutions that exercise government authority and enforce policies on the other, and systematically analyse their respective influence on climate policy preferences. In addition to investigating the direct influences of trust, we also focus on how trust in government institutions moderates the relationship between climate change concern and climate policy attitudes cross-nationally. Using European Social Survey data from 2016, we demonstrate that individual-level trust in both partial and impartial government institutions constitutes an important determinant of climate policy attitudes. Moreover, while we find no evidence of direct effects of trust at the country level, we demonstrate that individuals who are concerned about climate change are more likely to hold positive attitudes towards climate policies in high-trust countries, particularly where trust in impartial institutions such as the legal system and the police is high. Key policy insights. Individuals' tendency to favour climate policies depends on their trust in both partial government institutions that enact policies (e.g. parliament, politicians) and impartial institutions that enforce these policies (e.g. legal system, police).. At the country level, trust in impartial institutions plays a particularly crucial role for the translation of individuals' climate change concern into support for climate policies.. A climate policy platform with broad public support not only relies on a trustworthy political system that enacts sound climate policies, but also on well-functioning and trustworthy government institutions that ultimately enforce these policies.

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“…It is generally (although not universally) agreed that over the last 30 years there has been a long-term decline in citizen trust in government in mature democracies [24]. The best data set is from the US which shows that over 44 years, political trust has dropped from 78% to 44% [25,26] with increasingly apparent negative impacts [27][28][29][30]. Lack of political trust has been shown to undermine public engagement, hamper long-term policy, and hinder collective action [31,32].…”

Section: Do Citizens Trust Government?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Repairing Political Trust for Practical Sustainability

Weymouth

Hartz-Karp

2020

Sustainability

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High levels of trust in government are important in addressing complex issues, including the realization of the mainstream sustainability agenda. However, trust in government has been declining for decades across the western world, undermining legitimacy and hampering policy implementation and planning for long-term sustainability. We hypothesize that an important factor in this decline is citizen disappointment with the current types of public participation in governance and that this could be reversed through a change from informing/consulting to a relationship of partnership. Using case studies from Western Australia, the paper investigates whether an intervention targeted at establishing a partnership relationship through mini-public, deliberative, participatory budgeting would improve trust and help the implementation of sustainability. These results show evidence of improvements in trust and provide conceptual and practical tools for government administrations wishing to close the detrimental trust gap that may hamper the implementation of a sustainability agenda.

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How Trust in Governments Influences the Acceptance of Environmental Taxes

Cited by 15 publications

References 12 publications

Designing local renewable energy communities to increase social acceptance: Evidence from a choice experiment in Austria, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland

Designing local renewable energy communities to increase social acceptance: Evidence from a choice experiment in Austria, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland

Who do you trust? How trust in partial and impartial government institutions influences climate policy attitudes

Repairing Political Trust for Practical Sustainability

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