How can we improve air pollution? Try increasing trust first
Bridget Hoffmann,
Carlos Scartascini and
Fernando G. Cafferata
Environment and Development Economics, 2022, vol. 27, issue 5, 393-413
Abstract:
Environmental policies are characterized by salient short-term costs and long-term benefits that are difficult to observe and to attribute to the government's efforts. These characteristics imply that citizens’ support for environmental policies is highly dependent on their trust in the government's capability to implement solutions and commitment to investments in those policies. Using novel survey data from Mexico City, we show that trust in the government is positively correlated with citizens’ willingness to support an additional tax approximately equal to a day's minimum wage to improve air quality and greater preference for government retention of revenues from fees collected from polluting firms. We find similar correlations using the perceived quality of public goods as a measure of government competence. These results provide evidence that mistrust can be an obstacle to better environmental outcomes.
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)
Related works:
Working Paper: How Can We Improve Air Pollution?: Try Increasing Trust First (2021) 
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:cup:endeec:v:27:y:2022:i:5:p:393-413_1
Access Statistics for this article
More articles in Environment and Development Economics from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().