In Gov we Trust: Are Trust and Political Ideology Important Factors of Public Acceptance for Environmental Policies?

Catherine Benjamin, Sebastian Irigoyen and David Masclet
Additional contact information
Catherine Benjamin: Univ Rennes, CNRS, CREM - UMR 6211, F-35000 Rennes
Sebastian Irigoyen: Univ Rennes, CNRS, CREM - UMR 6211, F-35000 Rennes
David Masclet: Univ Rennes, CNRS, CREM - UMR 6211, F-35000 Rennes and CIRANO, Montreal Canada

Economics Working Paper Archive (University of Rennes & University of Caen) from Center for Research in Economics and Management (CREM), University of Rennes, University of Caen and CNRS

Abstract: Several environmental policies are efficient in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However these policies remain still very unpopular among the public and climate issues often provide ideal targets for populists who frame these issues as elite matters. In this current paper we attempt to answer the following question : are environmental issues a matter of elites? We conjecture that this is not necessarily the case but that there exists several factors that may refrain the poorest and less educated individuals from accepting environmental policies. The first explanation relies on the household’s budget constraint and the fact that high income and high educated individuals are in a better financial position to accept costly environmental policies. This explanation relates to the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that stipulates that individuals must have fulfilled lower needs before addressing higher levels of needs such as environmental issues. The second explanation is that education may affect support of environmental policies indirectly by reducing ignorance and mistrust, which constitute key barriers to public acceptance of environmental policies. We ran an empirical analysis based on the data from the European Social Survey (2016). We find that higher educated and income individuals are more likely to favor most of environmental policies, suggesting that educational background play both a direct and an indirect role. We also find that both mistrust in institutions and right wing populism, as proxies of skepticism constitute important barriers to most of environmental policies.

Keywords: Public support; Environmental policies; trust; populism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D02 D12 H11 H12 Q50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env, nep-pol and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ged.univ-rennes1.fr/nuxeo/site/esupversion ... 04-9e55-40863cee6bb4 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tut:cremwp:2023-02

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
CREM (UMR CNRS 6211) - Faculty of Economics, 7 place Hoche, 35065 Rennes Cedex - France

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Working Paper Archive (University of Rennes & University of Caen) from Center for Research in Economics and Management (CREM), University of Rennes, University of Caen and CNRS CREM (UMR CNRS 6211) – Faculty of Economics, 7 place Hoche, 35065 RENNES Cedex. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by GERMAIN Lucie ().