Preferences for change: Do individuals prefer voluntary actions, soft regulations, or hard regulations to decrease fossil fuel consumption?

Shahzeen Z. Attari, Mary Schoen, Cliff I. Davidson, Michael L. DeKay, Wändi Bruine de Bruin, Robyn Dawes and Mitchell J. Small

Ecological Economics, 2009, vol. 68, issue 6, 1701-1710

Abstract: Pittsburgh residents (n=209) reported their preferences for voluntary actions, soft regulations, and hard regulations to (a) limit the number of SUVs and trucks and (b) increase green energy use for household energy consumption. These two goals were presented in one of two motivating frames, as addressing either environmental or national security issues. For the goal of limiting SUVs and trucks, results indicated that participants favored voluntary actions over hard regulations, and soft regulations over voluntary actions. For the goal of increasing green energy, results indicated that participants preferred both voluntary actions and soft regulations over hard regulations, but had no significant preference between voluntary actions and soft regulations. How the problems were framed did not significantly affect participants' willingness to accept voluntary actions or regulations. Participants' environmental attitudes (as assessed using the New Ecological Paradigm scale) had a strong positive relationship with support for regulatory strategies intended to change the behaviors in question. Women were more likely to support voluntary actions than men. The loss of personal freedom was frequently mentioned as a reason for saying no to hard regulations.

Keywords: Preferences; for; change; Energy; conservation; Environmental; behavior; Regulations; Personal; freedom (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (46)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921-8009(08)00469-2
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:ecolec:v:68:y:2009:i:6:p:1701-1710

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().