EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Public Support for Environmental Regulation: When Ideology Trumps Knowledge

Markus Dertwinkel-Kalt and Max R. P. Grossmann

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: When environmental regulations are unpopular, policymakers often attribute resistance to information frictions and poor communication. We test this idea in the context of a major climate policy: Germany's Heating Law of 2023, which mandates the phase-out of fossil fuel heating. Through a survey experiment with property owners, we examine whether providing comprehensive information about the regulation's costs, requirements, and timeline affects adoption decisions and policy support. Despite successfully increasing factual knowledge, information provision has no significant effect on intended technology adoption, policy support, or incentivized measures of climate preferences. Instead, pre-existing environmental preferences and demographic characteristics emerge as the key predictors of responses to the regulation. A feeling that existing systems still work well and cost considerations dominate fossil fuel users' stated reasons for non-adoption, while independence from fossil fuels and perceived contributions to the common good drive adoption among switchers. Our findings suggest that opposition to climate policy stems from fundamental preference heterogeneity rather than information frictions. This has important implications for optimal policy design, highlighting potential limits of information provision in overcoming resistance to environmental regulation. The results also speak to broader questions in political economy about the relationship between knowledge, preferences, and support for policy reform.

Date: 2025-03
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.10821 Latest 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:arx:papers:2503.10821

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-22
Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2503.10821