Is more information always better? An analysis applied to information-based policies for environmental protection

Douadia Bougherara, Gilles Grolleau () and Naoufel Mzoughi

International Journal of Sustainable Development, 2007, vol. 10, issue 3, 197-213

Abstract: Environmental policy has intensively focused on information-based instruments that seek to change agents' behaviour through information provision. This information provision is generally considered as likely to ultimately improve environmental quality. We suggest a new and complementary way to consider information-based instruments. We formalise the insight that information provision differs from information impact by introducing the concept of informational elasticity. We show that, beyond an optimum level, an additional information load, regardless of the information quality, could do more harm than good. Indeed, some perverse effects could occur, resulting in a worse overall impact. Several policy and strategic implications, such as the potential conflict with the normative right-to-know principle and the manipulation of 'information overload', are stressed.

Keywords: information overload; information provision; informational elasticity; environmental policy; environmental information; sustainable development; sustainability. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=17643 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:ids:ijsusd:v:10:y:2007:i:3:p:197-213

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Sustainable Development from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().