Public support for degrowth policies and sufficiency behaviours in the United States: a discrete choice experiment

Dallas O'Dell, Davide Contu and Ganga Shreedhar

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Research on degrowth and its policy proposals has rapidly expanded, despite lacking empirical evidence on public perceptions. One conceptual proposition for affluent populations is that lifestyle changes, such as undertaking sufficiency-oriented behaviours, may engender degrowth policy support. Our research empirically investigated U.S. public support for degrowth policies, its relation to sufficiency behaviours, and whether a degrowth framing influenced policy support. In a pre-registered, online discrete choice experiment (N = 1012), we elicited perceptions of four commonly advocated degrowth policies - work time reductions, downscaling fossil fuel production, universal basic services, and advertising restrictions. Analyses revealed significant support for some specification of each alternative policy, especially fossil fuel caps and universal healthcare. We also found a significant positive association between sufficiency engagement and supporting fossil fuel restrictions. However, latent class analysis suggested that the link between behaviour and policy support was less consistent for socially oriented policies, and that those who supported such policies did not engage in sufficiency most frequently. Degrowth framing only significantly influenced preferences for universal healthcare. These findings suggest an appetite for advancing eco-social policies in the United States but point to a nuanced relationship between sufficiency lifestyles and degrowth policy support.

Keywords: sufficiency; behaviour; degrowth; policy support; public acceptability; discrete choice experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2025-02-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Ecological Economics, 28, February, 2025, 228. ISSN: 0921-8009

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/126084/ Open access version. (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:ehl:lserod:126084

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().