How Can We Improve Air Pollution?: Try Increasing Trust First

Fernando G. Cafferata, Bridget Hoffmann and Carlos Scartascini

No 11474, IDB Publications (Working Papers) from Inter-American Development Bank

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 days 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.

Keywords: Trust; Mexico; Publicly provided private goods; Public services quality; Air pollution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H23 H41 H42 Q52 Q53 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env, nep-res and nep-soc
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: How can we improve air pollution? Try increasing trust first (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:idb:brikps:11474

DOI: 10.18235/0003453

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