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

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  • 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.

Original languageEnglish
Article number102144
JournalJournal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics
Volume108
Number of pages23
ISSN2214-8043
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023

    Research areas

  • Economic interventions, Endogenous institutions, Environmental regulation, Pro-environmental behavior, Real effort

ID: 389903985