What mode of environmental regulation do post-industrial societies prefer and why?

Kolcava, Dennis; Rudolph, Lukas; Bernauer, Thomas

doi:10.31219/osf.io/qayvu

Cited by 3 publications

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“…Looking at all three factors simultaneously in one study speaks to real-world policymaking, where policy framing, design, and feedbacks usually occur together. We thus contribute to the literature by examining in a unified research design whether policy framing, design, and feedback can help increase public support for food waste reduction measures as public opinion research on related environmental policy fields suggestsand whether and how these three factors interrelate 12,[16][17][18]25,34 .…”

Section: How Policy Framing Design and Feedbacks Can Affect Public Su...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Policy framing, design and feedback can increase public support for costly food waste regulation

2022

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About one-third of all food produced for human consumption worldwide is wasted, particularly in highincome countries. Reducing this waste is key to decreasing negative environmental impacts from the food sector and increasing food security in developing countries. Yet, achieving food waste reduction is challenging. It is widely presumed that efforts at stricter food waste regulation may increase food prices, and hence consumer and citizen opposition could render such ambitious regulation politically unfeasible.Here, we argue that appropriate policy framing, design, and feedbacks can ensure public support despite food price increases. Our empirical analysis uses survey experiments with a population-representative sample (N=3'329) from a typical high-income country, Switzerland. First, in a combined framing and conjoint experiment, we show that messages emphasizing national or international social norms in favor of reducing food waste (policy framing) can increase public support for more ambitious reduction targets.We also show that a majority of citizens support food waste regulation, even if this leads to substantial increases in food prices, but only if such policies set stringent reduction targets and are transparently monitored (policy design). Finally, in a vignette experiment, we show that voluntary industry initiatives do not crowd out individuals' support for stricter governmental regulation, but potentially crowd-in support if industry initiatives are unambitious (policy feedback). Our research offers an analytical template for studying public support for food waste regulation and shows that there is more political room for adopting ambitious policies than hitherto presumed.

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Section: How Policy Framing Design and Feedbacks Can Affect Public Su...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Policy framing, design and feedback can increase public support for costly food waste regulation

2022

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“…With respect to the effects of policy design, two less well-studied questions are, however, to what extent citizens prefer voluntary industry standards to binding governmental policies targeting firms, and under which conditions citizens support co-regulation frameworks that combine both voluntary and binding policies. It has recently been shown that citizens prefer co-regulated environmental policies that include voluntary forms of private governance if these policies also employ strong transparency and monitoring mechanisms, and contain a trigger for government intervention in case of ineffective voluntary industry measures 31 . In general, individuals tend to prefer environmental policies that they perceive as effective to solve the underlying problem 47 .…”

Section: Policy Designs That Effectively Reduce Food Waste Can Increase Support Despite Higher Food Pricesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, voluntary initiatives could increase the salience of the food waste problem, leading to more social norm pressure and thereby crowd-in rather than crowd-out demand for stricter governmental regulation of firms 22,24,50 . Second, weak and shallow industry initiatives to reduce food waste are likely to be perceived as ineffective and citizens would in turn demand stiffer governmental regulation 31 . Third, front-running companies might also use voluntary actions to increase public pressure on public officials to adopt stricter standards, which in turn would provide them with a comparative advantage over market competitors that are laggards 25 .…”

Section: Voluntary Industry Initiatives Can Feed Back Into Citizens' Support For Governmental Regulation and Consumers' Intentions To Redmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…fields suggests, and whether and how these three factors relate 11,[13][14][15]22,31 . In particular, we look into whether citizen support for stringent policies increases with (voluntary) firm-led or (mandatory) government-led measures to reduce food waste and whether citizens would support ambitious food waste reduction policies that target the food industry but increase food prices.…”

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Citizens support ambitious but costly regulation against food waste

Fesenfeld¹,

Rudolph²,

Bernauer³

2021

Preprint

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About one-third of all food produced for human consumption worldwide is wasted, particularly in high-income countries. Reducing this waste is key to decreasing negative environmental impacts from the food sector and increasing food security in developing countries. Yet, achieving food waste reduction is challenging. It is widely presumed that efforts at stronger food waste governance may increase food prices, and hence consumer and citizen opposition that renders effective governance politically unfeasible. Here, we assess this critical presumption and argue that policy framing and design can ensure public support for ambitious but costly food waste governance, while policy feedbacks from voluntary firm actions are unlikely to diminish public support. Our empirical analysis uses survey experiments with a population-representative sample (N=3’329) from a typical high-income country with a unique direct democratic tradition, Switzerland. First, in a combined framing and conjoint experiment, we show that messages emphasizing national or international social norms in favor of reducing food waste (policy framing) can increase public support for more ambitious reduction targets. We also show that a majority of citizens support food waste governance that leads to substantial increases in food prices, but only if such policies set stringent reduction targets and are transparently monitored (policy design). Finally, in a vignette experiment, we show that voluntary industry initiatives do not crowd out individuals’ intentions to reduce their food waste nor support for stronger governmental regulation, but even crowd public support in if industry initiatives are unambitious (policy feedback). Our research offers an analytical template for studying public support for food waste governance and shows that there is more political room for adopting ambitious policies than hitherto presumed.

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“…The reliance on voluntary environmental action by firms in many environmental contexts raises the question to what extent citizens are likely to hold private-sector actors politically accountable (e.g., Bekkers et al, 2016;Kolcava et al, 2020b) if they fail to contribute towards the provision of environmental commons by voluntary action. In this light, I investigate if greenwashing allegations affect citizens' attitudes towards voluntary environmental action by firms and if these accusations can influence public pressure for environmental regulation of business activity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Greenwashing and public demand for government regulation

Kolcava¹

2020

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Environmental policy in many Western democracies relies on voluntary environmentalaction by the private sector. This policy mode is strongly contested though.Proponents of introducing government regulation argue that voluntary corporateenvironmental action is rarely more than “greenwashing”. Can policymakers rely onpublic opinion to hold firms accountable for (lacking) contributions to environmentalgoods? I argue that greenwashing accusations reduce citizens’ confidence in boththe effectiveness of voluntary environmental action by firms and the alignment offirms’ economic interest and environmental protection. Furthermore, I propose, thatcitizens’ support for government intervention increases in response to firms being accusedof greenwashing. I test this argument in a survey experiment (N=2112) on asample representative of the Swiss voting population. The analysis shows that accusingfirms of greenwashing changes how citizens perceive voluntary environmentalaction by firms. This, however, does not translate into shifts in citizens’ regulatorypreferences.

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What mode of environmental regulation do post-industrial societies prefer and why?

Cited by 3 publications

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Policy framing, design and feedback can increase public support for costly food waste regulation

Policy framing, design and feedback can increase public support for costly food waste regulation

Citizens support ambitious but costly regulation against food waste

Greenwashing and public demand for government regulation

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