What's in it for me? Self-interest and preferences for distribution of costs and benefits of energy efficiency policies

Valeria Fanghella, Corinne Faure, Marie-Charlotte Guetlein and Joachim Schleich

Ecological Economics, 2023, vol. 204, issue PA

Abstract: Public acceptability appears an essential condition for the success of low-carbon transition policies. In this paper, we investigate the role of self-interest on citizens' preferences for the distribution of costs and environmental benefits of energy efficiency policies. Using a discrete choice experiment on nationally representative household samples of Sweden, Italy, and the United Kingdom, we first investigate preferences for national burden-sharing rules and for the distribution of environmental benefits accruing primarily in rural and/or urban areas. We examine the role of self-interest and self-serving bias in a correlational manner by looking at the effects of income and location of residency on preferences for these policy attributes. Moreover, we investigate the effect of self-serving bias on preferences for burden-sharing rules in a causal manner by experimentally priming randomly assigned groups of participants to feel either rich or poor. Our results suggest that the accountability rule is the most popular and the equal-amount rule the least popular burden-sharing rule. Further, policies with environmental benefits accruing primarily in rural areas are least preferred. We find some evidence for self-interest, especially through our correlational approach. Finally, across country samples, our results reveal heterogeneity in preferences for policy attributes and in the prevalence of self-interest.

Keywords: Policy acceptability; Self-interest; Self-serving bias; Distributional fairness; Burden-sharing rules; Discrete choice experiment; Energy efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:204:y:2023:i:pa:s0921800922003202

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107659

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