Better us later than me now —

Marius Alt

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2024, vol. 108, issue C

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Pro-environmental behavior; Economic interventions; Environmental regulation; Real effort; Endogenous institutions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D04 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceco:v:108:y:2024:i:c:s2214804323001702

DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2023.102144

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