Understanding the Effects of Corruption and Political Trust on Willingness to Make Economic Sacrifices for Environmental Protection in a Cross‐National Perspective

Harring, Niklas

doi:10.1111/j.1540-6237.2012.00904.x

Cited by 74 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Increasing numbers of studies are presenting multilevel analyses of data on environmental attitudes from multiple countries (e.g., Fairbrother 2013;Franzen and Meyer 2010;Gelissen 2007;Givens and Jorgenson 2013;Harring 2013;Jorgenson and Givens 2014;Kvaløy, Finseraas, and Listhaug 2012;Marquart-Pyatt 2012;Pampel 2014). However, few have identified factors that correlate cross-nationally with environmental concern or preferences, whereas this article shows that political trust predicts not only differences across individuals in their support for environmental protection but also differences across countries.…”

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confidence: 80%

Trust and Public Support for Environmental Protection in Diverse National Contexts

Fairbrother¹

2016

SocScience

116

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Worldwide, most people share scientists' concerns about environmental problems, but reject the solution that policy experts most strongly recommend: putting a price on pollution. Why? I show that this puzzling gap between the public's positive concerns and normative preferences is due substantially to a lack of trust, particularly political trust. In multilevel models fitted to two international survey datasets, trust strongly predicts support for environmental protection within countries and, by some measures, among countries also. An influential competing theory holds that environmental attitudes correlate mostly with left versus right political ideology; the results here, however, show that this correlation is weaker and varies substantially from country to country-unlike that with trust. Theoretically, these results reflect that environmental degradation is a collective action problem and environmental protection a public good. Methodologically, they derive from the more flexible application of multilevel modeling techniques than in previous studies using such models.

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confidence: 80%

Trust and Public Support for Environmental Protection in Diverse National Contexts

Fairbrother¹

2016

SocScience

116

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“…Although the causal links between governance and biodiversity conservation remain unclear, there are several plausible mechanisms. The relationship between biodiversity and corruption is complex and poorly understood (Smith & Walpole 2005;Barrett et al 2006), but willingness to make economic sacrifices for environmental protection appears to be strongly affected by individual political trust (Harring 2013). The over-centralization typical of countries with lower governance scores may inhibit local conservation actions (Everard 2015;Zheng & Cao 2015) and in these states conservation policy may not be supported by the development of legal standards and procedures (Otto et al 2011).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the drivers of variation in responses to biodiversity and wildlife have been explored in local contexts (Johansson et al 2013;Kansky et al 2014) and predictors of broad environmentalism have been assessed at a multinational level (Gelissen 2007;Nawrotzki 2012;Givens & Jorgenson 2013;Harring 2013;Hershfield et al 2014), studies of conservation responses at the national level are sparse. To our knowledge, the only conservation-specific response metrics that have been considered on a national level are biodiversity loss (Shandra et al 2009;Butchart et al 2010;Rodrigues et al 2014), domestic conservation spending (McClanahan & Rankin 2016), protected area cover (Kashwan 2017) and a composite of these three metrics specifically with regards to megafauna conservation (Lindsey et al 2017).…”

Section: Factormentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Relationship with National Individual environmentalism (across countries) (within country) Wealth (1) Variable, generally positive GDP or rate of economic development (Gelissen 2007;Givens & Jorgenson 2011) Personal wealth relative to the national average (Gelissen 2007;Franzen & Vogl 2013), but see Dunlap and York (2008) Trust (2) Positive Governance (Harring 2013) Interpersonal trust (Meyer & Liebe 2010;Franzen & Vogl 2013) Post-materialism (3) Positive Post-materialism (Gelissen 2007) Post-materialist values (Gelissen 2007;Franzen & Vogl 2013;Gifford & Nilsson 2014), but see Davis (2000) Awareness (4) Positive Media coverage of environmental issues (Harring et al 2011); national levels of education (Ignatow 2006) Individual levels of education (Gelissen 2007;Clements 2012;Franzen & Vogl 2013;Gifford & Nilsson 2014) Autonomy/maturity (5) Positive Years since independence (Hershfield et al 2014); autonomy, self-expression (Dobewall & Strack 2014) Sense of control, age, political engagement (Gelissen 2007;Clements 2012;Gifford & Nilsson 2014) Integration (6) Positive Integration with world polity (Boli & Thomas 1997;Frank et al 2000;Givens & Jorgenson 2013); perceived country age (Hershfield et al 2014) Sense of control; responsibility (Gifford & Nilsson 2014); civic cooperation (Owen & Videras 2006) Environmental experience Positive Level of en...…”

Section: Factormentioning

confidence: 99%

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Governance explains variation in national responses to the biodiversity crisis

et al. 2018

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SUMMARYGrowing concern about the biodiversity crisis has led to a proliferation of conservation responses, but with wide variation between countries in the levels of engagement and investment. Much of this variation is inevitably attributed to differences between nations in wealth. However, the relationship between environmentalism and wealth is complex and it is increasingly apparent that other factors are also involved. We review hypotheses that have been developed to explain variation in broad environmentalism and show that many of the factors that explain such variation in individuals, such as wealth, age and experience, also explain differences between nation states. We then assess the extent to which these factors explain variation between nation states in responses to and investment in the more specific area of biodiversity conservation. Unexpectedly, quality of governance explained substantially more variation in public and state investment in biodiversity conservation than did direct measures of wealth. The results inform assessments of where conservation investments might most profitably be directed in the future and suggest that metrics relating to governance might be of considerable use in conservation planning.

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“…In testing these last two hypotheses, this study builds on prior research arguing that trust, including particularly political trust, shapes support for environmental protection (e.g., Duit 2010; Hammar and Jagers 2006;Harring 2013;Konisky, Milyo, and Richardson 2008;Lubell 2002;Meyer and Liebe 2010;Rudolph and Evans 2005). 9 Previous studies have all, however, all been based on observational data.…”

Section: Public Support For Environmental Taxesmentioning

confidence: 99%

When Will People Pay to Pollute? Environmental Taxes, Political Trust and Experimental Evidence from Britain

Fairbrother¹

2017

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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This article presents results from survey experiments investigating conditions under which Britons are willing to pay taxes on polluting activities. People are no more willing if revenues are hypothecated for spending on environmental protection, while making such taxes more relevant to people – by naming petrol and electricity as products to which they will apply – has a modestly negative effect. Public willingness increases sharply if people are told that new environmental taxes would be offset by cuts to other taxes, but political distrust appears to undermine much of this effect. Previous studies have argued that political trust shapes public opinion with respect to environmental and many other policies. But this article provides the first experimental evidence suggesting that the relationship is causal, at least for one specific facet: cynicism about public officials’ honesty and integrity. The results suggest a need to make confidence in the trustworthiness of public officials and their promises more central to conceptualizations of political trust.

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Understanding the Effects of Corruption and Political Trust on Willingness to Make Economic Sacrifices for Environmental Protection in a Cross‐National Perspective

Cited by 74 publications

References 22 publications

Trust and Public Support for Environmental Protection in Diverse National Contexts

Trust and Public Support for Environmental Protection in Diverse National Contexts

Governance explains variation in national responses to the biodiversity crisis

When Will People Pay to Pollute? Environmental Taxes, Political Trust and Experimental Evidence from Britain

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