what actions might a government take to protect ecosystems
While the global community has yet to successfully address large-calibration environmental problems, such as climate change and global warming, considerable differences exist across societies with regard to environmental performance (Emerson et al. 2010; Hsu and Zomer 2016). In the literature, government is often ascribed a pivotal role in protecting the surroundings, for example, through the implementation of ecology policies that protect the environment directly or solve environmental collective activeness bug (Mansbridge 2014). Meanwhile, the prospects for governments to increase their efforts to protect the environment ultimately rely on public support, as wavering support might impose substantial constraints on governments' ecology policy ambitions. To facilitate the weather nether which effective and potentially plush environmental policies can successfully be enacted, it is therefore crucial to have a good agreement about the processes underlying citizens' support for environmental policy.
Public support for environmental policies should ultimately depend on the extent to which citizens think that, equally a general principle, it ought to be the regime'due south responsibility to protect the environment. As a result, people should be more probable to back up government spending on the surround if they remember that protecting the environment is government's responsibility in the kickoff place. However, the translation of such normative views about government responsibleness into physical policy attitudes does non occur in a social and institutional vacuum. In fact, a growing number of studies show that environmental beliefs and values are far from always translated into corresponding behaviors and policy stances (Kollmuss and Agyeman 2002), and that considerable cross-national differences exist in this regard (Pisano and Lubell 2017; Tam and Chan 2018), suggesting that contextual factors at the country level play a crucial moderating role.
In this study, nosotros use cantankerous-national data to investigate the human relationship between normative views on government responsibility to protect the surroundings and support for increasing government spending on the surroundings. We argue that the extent to which normative views about government responsibility for environmental protection translate into support for ecology policies depends on the quality of authorities institutions (encounter, eastward.grand., Rothstein 2011). In particular, the translation of normative views into support for government spending on the environment should ultimately rely on whether government institutions that implement and enforce policies generally are constructive, fair, and incorrupt. Hence, whereas citizens might hold as a general principle that governments should ideally exist responsible for protecting the environs, they might still non support the notion that their own authorities should increase ecology spending, if regime institutions are inefficient and decadent. We therefore wait that the human relationship betwixt normative views and spending preferences is stronger in countries where the quality of government is high.
PREVIOUS Enquiry
Previous research on environmental attitudes has identified a number of determinants at the individual level, such as more key beliefs and values (Dietz, Stern, and Guagnano 1998; Stern and Dietz 1994). Many studies have shown that environmental issues such every bit climate change accept get increasingly politicized in western countries (see, eastward.chiliad., Carter 2014; McCright and Dunlap 2011). While public support for government spending on the surround historically has been detached from traditional political cleavages (Jacoby 1994), results from more than recent studies, mainly from the United States, suggest that spending preferences have become increasingly polarized along partisan lines, as citizens who hold left-wing or liberal views are more probable to support environmental spending compared to those with right-wing or conservative views (east.g., McCright et al. 2014). Furthermore, research on attitudes towards environmental taxes, for instance, on fossil fuels, take similarly shown that public support is politically polarized and intimately linked to political ideology (Fairbrother 2016; Harring, Jagers, and Matti 2017; Harring and Jagers 2013; Konisky et al. 2008).
In fact, the importance of political credo is a reoccurring theme in the literature on environmental attitudes, as liberals and left-wing supporters are more likely to embrace many forms of environmentalism compared to conservatives and correct-wing supporters (Dunlap 1975; Dunlap, Xiao, and McCright 2001). This is as well in line with the wider literature on views about government responsibility, which shows that citizens to the left are comparably more likely to support government intervention through revenue enhancement and public spending across a wide range of domains, such as social welfare and the labor market (eastward.g., Feldman and Zaller 1992; Jaeger 2006).
Nevertheless, nigh studies that investigate the influence of ideological orientations on environmental attitudes focus on individuals' political cocky-identification in terms of their subjective placement on a political left–right continuum (for an overview, meet Harring et al. 2017). While political credo in terms of dissimilar positions on the subjective left–right scale is oft causeless to involve distinct normative views with regard to the scale and scope of regime intervention (meet, due east.g., Inglehart and Klingemann 1976; encounter as well Lipset and Rokkan 1967), very few studies on environmental policy attitudes focus on ideological orientations that explicitly refer to the role of authorities in protecting the environment. Meanwhile, several authors contend that individuals' subjective placement on the political left–right continuum constitutes a crude and to some extent elusive conceptualization of political credo, since "left" and "right" are relatively vague categories defective consistent and substantive meanings across time and identify (Knutsen 1998; see also Kumlin 2004). Equally a result, extrapolating normative views about the function of regime based on subjective left–right placement can be problematic, thereby underscoring the advantage of direct measuring normative views virtually authorities responsibility.
Previous inquiry has shown that citizens' support for government spending on the environment displays considerable cross-national variation (Rasinski et al. 1994). Meanwhile, relatively few cantankerous-national studies exist that focus on the relationship between more concrete ideological orientations, such equally normative views about the function of government, and back up for authorities spending on the environment. Several studies using left–right orientation and other broad measures of ideology show that their effects on ecology attitudes are often stronger in certain countries (Fairbrother 2016; McCright et al. 2016; see too Tesler 2018). This suggests that the impact of more physical ideological orientations such as normative views most the function of regime very likely too differ cross-nationally. However, very few studies be that investigate the role of contextual factors at the state level in moderating the human relationship betwixt ideological orientations and more concrete environmental policy attitudes.
Meanwhile, previous enquiry has identified directly linkages between subjective perceptions of regime institutions and policy support, which raises the question of whether these linkages are, at to the lowest degree partly, the result of a moderating influence of institutions on the relationship between ideological orientations and policy support. In fact, many studies have shown that public back up for environmental policies to a large extent depends on citizens' trust in politicians and the political system. For case, studies have plant that support for environmental taxes is generally stronger amongst citizens and in countries with high levels of political trust (Fairbrother 2016; Harring and Jagers 2013; Kollmann and Reichl 2015). These studies confirm the more general findings in the literature on policy attitudes, namely, that political trust is vital for policy support (run into, eastward.g., Rudolph and Evans 2005), since people take to trust that politicians will not act irresponsibly, for example, when handling taxpayers' contributions (see besides Hetherington 2005).1
The finding that political trust at the country level has an independent upshot on policy attitudes, even when decision-making for political trust at the individual level (e.chiliad., Fairbrother 2016), suggests that the actual trustworthiness and demonstrated competence of politicians and the political system matter for policy support (e.thou., Levi and Stoker 2000). However, due to the focus on politicians and the political system (political trust), previous cross-national enquiry has largely neglected the function of the legal and bureaucratic institutions responsible for delivering and implementing policies. While political trust should be particularly decisive regarding public support for environmental revenue enhancement policies (e.g., carbon taxes), since people take to trust that politicians collect and handle taxpayers' contributions responsibly, nosotros fence that support for authorities spending on ecology policies should depend more than on the characteristics of government institutions that implement and enforce policies. In a recent contribution, Arpad (2018) provides back up for this notion by showing that trust in the government'south capacity to successfully implement policies is crucial for people's willingness to support spending on ecology policies. Yet, since the author studied people'due south trust in these institutions it is not clear whether differences in spending back up merely reflect subjective perceptions or whether back up depend on actual institutional performance.
Quality of Government
In the "skillful governance" literature, an increasingly prominent perspective focuses on the "quality of regime" (QoG). According to this perspective, high-quality government is characterized by impartial, fair, efficient, and incorrupt institutions that exercise government authorisation (Holmberg, Rothstein, and Nasiritousi 2009; Rothstein 2011). These institutions thus constitute the "output" side of the political system, ranging from the legal system and the police, to the bureaucratic organisation and its public officials. While there has been some fence in the autonomous theory literature on the importance of distinguishing the institutions that do government authorisation (i.e., QoG) from other democratic institutions (e.g., legislative institutions), empirical testify is mounting that demonstrates a surprisingly weak link between legislative and implementing institutions, thus suggesting that QoG constitutes a unique feature of the political system (Rothstein 2011).2 Furthermore, studies take tied QoG to a wide range of desired social and economic outcomes, such as public wellness, economic prosperity, and environmental sustainability (see, Holmberg, Rothstein, and Nasiritousi 2009).
However, with regard to sustainability, the results are not clear-cut. For example, while some studies detect that national levels of corruption are associated with low scores on the by now well-established Environmental Sustainability Alphabetize (Morse 2006), other studies find the opposite relationship between corruption and the Ecological Footprint index (Ewers and Smith 2007). These results are hardly surprising, since these ii indexes are based on very different conceptualizations of "sustainability" (Böhringer and Jochem 2007). As a event, the quality of authorities institutions very likely has different effects depending on the particular aspects of sustainability in focus (e.g., improved local environmental conditions vs. reduced global carbon footprint). Hence, the underlying mechanism tying the quality of government institutions to sustainability and other favorable environmental outcomes remains under-theorized and empirically unexplored.
Nosotros argue that 1 important way in which QoG could exist linked to favorable environmental outcomes of societies, such every bit dissimilar indicators of sustainability, is through its relation to public support for environmental policy. Previous research has shown that certain aspects of "high-quality government," such equally lack of corruption, have been associated with people's willingness to make economic sacrifices to protect the environment (Harring 2013) equally well as more positive public perceptions about the effectiveness of environmental policy instruments (Harring 2014; come across also Harring 2016). While corruption constitutes a narrow conceptualization of QoG (Rothstein 2011), the results from these studies nevertheless suggest that QoG can have important implications for public support for government spending on the environment.
In fact, previous studies have tied regime spending in other areas to the quality of regime. For example, Rothstein (2011) finds that welfare state spending levels are clearly related to QoG, suggesting that public support for regime spending in general increases with higher authorities quality. More importantly here, in a study focusing on the influence of perceived quality of government on social spending preferences, Svallfors (2013) finds that public perceptions non but have a directly event on support for authorities spending, merely that these perceptions also moderates the effect of normative views (egalitarianism) on social spending preferences. This suggests that QoG is a potentially crucial moderator of the human relationship betwixt more central normative (i.east., ideological) orientations and concrete spending preferences.
HYPOTHESES
Based on our review of the literature, we look to notice a mostly positive relationship between normative views about government responsibility for protecting the environment, on the one hand, and public support for increasing authorities spending on the environs, on the other. However, we too expect that the force of this relationship varies across countries that differ in terms of government quality. In countries where government institutions are comparably inefficient and corrupt, citizens should be less probable to support increasing regime spending, even though they recall that government should ideally be responsible for protecting the environment. We therefore derive the following hypotheses:
H1: At that place is a general positive result of normative views about authorities responsibleness for protecting the environment on support for increasing government spending on the surroundings (Individual-level effect).
H2: The effect of normative views on support for spending is stronger in countries with loftier-quality government (Cross-level interaction upshot).
THE STUDY
To investigate the hypothesized moderating influence of QoG (at the land level) on the private-level relationship between citizens' normative views on government responsibility for protecting the surroundings and their support for government spending on the environment, we used multilevel analysis (MLA). This type of regression technique is suitable when analyzing data nerveless from individuals every bit well as their contexts, i.e., hierarchical data. In MLA it is not only possible to report the effects of both individual- and country-level variables on an individual-level outcome simultaneously, simply, more importantly, also possible to study the cross-level interaction between individual- and country-level predictors (Snijders 2011). Hence, MLA enabled united states of america to study not just the effect of normative views near government responsibleness on spending preferences, but besides the moderating influence of QoG on this effect cross-nationally.
For the private-level variables, we used information from the module "Part of Government 5" in the International Social Survey Program (ISSP). The survey data were nerveless predominantly in the twelvemonth 2016 and institute representative samples for the developed population in almost thirty countries (ISSP Research Group 2018). The countries included in our analyses were (abbreviations in parenthesis): Republic of chile (CL), Croatia (HR), Czech Republic (CZ), Denmark (DK), Finland (FI), France (FR), Germany (DE), Hungary (HU), Republic of iceland (IS), Israel (IL), Nihon (JP), Latvia (LV), Lithuania (LT), New Zealand (NZ), Kingdom of norway (NO), Philippines (PH), Slovakia (SK), Slovenia (SI), South korea (KR), Spain (ES), Sweden (SE), Switzerland (CH), Taiwan (TW), Thailand (Th), U.k. (United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland), and U.s. (U.s.a.).iii In Table ane we nowadays country sample sizes (northward) and country means for the individual-level variables, as well as scores for the country-level indicators.
Tabular array 1 Abbreviations, Country Sample Sizes (n), and Variable Means for 26 Countries
To written report the relationship between normative views about the responsibility of regime to protect the surround and back up for government spending on the surroundings, we used two items from the ISSP. Every bit an indicator of support for government spending on the environment, we used an detail asking respondents whether they "Would similar to see more or less government spending" on the surround. The item responses were coded then that college values indicate stronger support for increasing spending (1 = "Spend much less," 2 = "Spend less," iii = "Spend the aforementioned as now," 4 = "Spend more than," and 5 = "Spend much more").4
Equally an indicator of normative views about government'southward responsibility for environmental protection, nosotros used an item request respondents the following question: "On the whole, do you think it should or should non be the government's responsibility to impose strict laws to make industry do less damage to the environment?" The available item responses were coded so that higher values indicate more than positive views on government responsibleness (ane = "Definitely should not be," 2 = "Probably should non exist," iii = "Probably should be," and four = "Definitely should be").
At the individual level, we also included a set of groundwork control variables. The original dichotomous variable "sex" was coded so that the higher value represents "adult female" (0 = "human being," i = "woman"). The variable historic period was used every bit a continuous variable indicating respondent's age, in years. Finally, the variable educational attainment was coded so that it ranges from 1 to 7, where 1 represents "No formal education" and 7 represents the highest level of formal education (i.e., academy degree).5
To written report the moderating influence of the quality of government, we used the International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) scores from the QoG database (Teorell et al. 2018). The ICRG index is a composite measure based on three components of authorities quality. The first component concerns abuse in the political organisation, focusing on how it inserts instability into the political process and undermines government efficiency. The second component concerns law and order, in terms of the strength and impartiality of the judicial system as well equally the extent to which laws are implemented and abided by. The third component concerns the quality of bureaucracy, in terms of its strength and autonomy in delivering authorities services. The QoG (ICRG) index is scaled 0–i, where higher scores (close to 1) are indicative of a college government quality, that is, the lack of corruption combined with an impartial legal organisation and an autonomous bureaucracy.
To ensure that the relationship between normative views and spending preferences is chastened by QoG, and not by other contextual factors, we as well included a prepare of land-level controls. Since the demand for further government spending on the surround at least to some extent should depend on the actual efforts of authorities to protect the surround, nosotros included the Environmental Functioning Alphabetize (EPI). The EPI is a composite measure based on 24 indicators capturing the environmental operation of government policies with regard to environmental health and ecosystem vitality (Wendling et al. 2018). EPI scores range from 0 to 100, where high scores indicate loftier government performance.
Withal, since the opportunities for governments to protect the surroundings are also contingent on the current state of the economy, we also included Gdp per capita. Nosotros retrieved GDP data for the year 2015 from the World Banking concern. To ensure cross-national comparability, we selected Gross domestic product per capita adapted for purchasing power parities (PPP), in grand US dollars. Additionally, since overall authorities spending tin can vary across countries, nosotros also control for public spending as percentage of total Gdp. Moreover, previous inquiry suggests that overall public spending and QoG are correlated (Rothstein and Teorell 2008), thus strengthening the example for taking overall public spending into consideration when assessing the effects of QoG. Given also that environmental spending preferences to some extent depend on general spending preferences, and that actual spending level in a country very likely influences these preferences, it appears crucial to accept overall spending into business relationship. We therefore retrieved data on public spending as percentage of Gdp for the twelvemonth 2015 from the World Bank.6
RESULTS
Initially, nosotros examined the relationship betwixt normative views and spending preferences cross-nationally. In Figure one, we report the inside-country correlations (at the private level) with regard to this relationship (gray bars).
The Role of Authorities in Protecting the Environment: Quality of Government and the Translation of Normative Views near Government Responsibility into Spending Preferences
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02 May 2019
FIGURE one Correlation betwixt normative views on government responsibleness for environmental protection and back up for increased regime spending on the environment, by country.
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The results in Figure 1 provide preliminary support for our first hypothesis (H1), namely, that there is a general positive private-level effect of normative views on spending support. Moreover, the bar chart likewise displays clear cross-national differences in the strength of the human relationship betwixt normative views and spending preferences. While the correlation is effectually or in a higher place .four in many countries (due east.g., Sweden, Norway, and the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland), the correlation is merely effectually or below .1 in several other countries (eastward.yard., the Philippines, Thailand, and Lithuania). Hence, while near people in the countries studied concord that the government should exist responsible for protecting the environment (encounter Table one), the extent to which these normative views are translated into support for increasing government spending on the environment varies considerably beyond countries.
To examine whether these cross-national differences in the strength of the relationship between normative views and spending preferences are related to the quality of authorities, we plotted the within-country correlations (y-axis) against national QoG scores (x-centrality). Effigy 2 shows that there is a stiff relationship between the within-country correlations (between normative views and spending preferences) and the quality of government (R 2 = .73). In countries with high QoG scores, the correlation is substantially stronger than in countries with low scores. These results thus bespeak that people who recall that information technology is the responsibility of the government to protect the environment are more probable to support increasing government ecology spending in countries where the quality of regime institutions is loftier. This suggests the existence of a cantankerous-level interaction, where the quality of regime institutions moderates the effect of individuals' normative views on their spending preferences.
The Office of Government in Protecting the Environment: Quality of Regime and the Translation of Normative Views well-nigh Government Responsibility into Spending Preferences
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02 May 2019
FIGURE 2 Scatterplot for the relationship between the strength of the responsibility-spending correlation and the quality of government (QoG).
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In the next step, we formally tested the statistical significance of this cross-level interaction and estimated the effect size in a series of multilevel regression models where we also controlled for a range of relevant individual- and country-level factors. The results of these regression models are presented in Table 2. In Model one, only the chief independent variable (normative views nigh government responsibility for protecting the environment) and the private-level background variables (gender, age, and education) were included. The results show that the positive stock-still effect of normative views virtually government responsibility is statistically significant and substantial (b = 0.335; p < .001). This means that the difference betwixt responding "Definitely should" and "Definitely should non" be the government'south responsibility results in approximately a one-unit change on the dependent variable measuring spending preferences. This clearly confirms our outset hypothesis (H1) that there is a general positive individual-level effect of normative views about government responsibility to protect the environment on support for government spending.
TABLE 2 Multilevel Models of Support for Government Spending on the Surround
Moreover, the random slope for normative views shows that there are statistically significant (p < .001) differences in the relationship between these views and spending preferences beyond countries (SD = 0.133). This confirms our expectation that the strength of the outcome of normative views on spending preferences differs cross-nationally. Given the variability in the result of normative views on spending preferences, it makes sense to proceed by examining the potentially moderating influence of QoG and other contextual factors in order to explain cantankerous-national differences in this individual-level human relationship.
In Model 2, we include our principal cantankerous-level interaction term between normative views and the state-level variable measuring QoG (ICRG). The results show that the cantankerous-level interaction outcome is statistically significant and positive (b = 0.775; p < .001). Considering that QoG theoretically ranges between 0 and 1, where observations for individual countries range between 0.42 and 0.97, the effect tin be considered substantial in size. Furthermore, we find that the variance component (random slope) of normative views about government responsibleness is reduced by almost one-half (48.1%) from 0.133 to 0.064, suggesting that QoG is a crucial state-level moderator of the individual-level outcome of normative views on spending preferences. Hence, in high-QoG countries, people who recollect that the regime should ultimately exist responsible for protecting the environment are more likely to support increasing government spending on the environment.
In Model iii, we estimate the cantankerous-level interaction term, while controlling for the contextual factors GDP, EPI, and public spending. In Models 4 to six, we estimate our main cross-level interaction term, while simultaneously including competing cantankerous-level interaction terms between normative views and each of the contextual factors, separately. The results from these models testify that QoG consistently has a statistically significant (p < .001) moderating result in all of the models (b = 0.57–0.79). Regarding the cantankerous-level interactions involving the other contextual factors, merely public spending (Model 6) has a significant, albeit weak moderating effect (b = 0.004; p < .01). This means that, in countries with college levels of public spending, normative views are more likely to translate into support for increasing government spending. More chiefly, while the main cross-level interaction term (based on QoG) fluctuates somewhat beyond Models 4–half-dozen, the inclusion of additional cross-level interaction terms based on Gross domestic product, EPI, and public spending does not substantially alter the statistical significance or the interpretation of QoG as a crucial moderator of the relationship betwixt normative views and spending preferences. Hence, the results of the multilevel models ostend our hypothesis (H2) that the effect of normative views nigh government responsibility for environmental protection on spending preferences is stronger in countries with high-quality authorities institutions.
Finally, in Figure three, nosotros graphically illustrate the principal cantankerous-level interaction upshot from the multilevel analysis in a marginal effects plot. The plot shows the private-level consequence of people's normative views on their spending preferences at different levels of QoG, thereby simplifying the estimation of the cross-level interaction issue. The y-centrality indicates the change in spending preferences for a 1-unit increase in the item measuring normative views, while the x-axis represents the level of QoG across countries. The plotted line with 95% confidence intervals (gray area) shows how the issue changes depending on the level of QoG.
The Office of Government in Protecting the Surroundings: Quality of Government and the Translation of Normative Views nigh Government Responsibility into Spending Preferences
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02 May 2019
FIGURE 3 Marginal effect of views about government responsibility on support for regime spending on the environs for different levels of quality of government (QoG).
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The plot shows that the effect of normative views in depression-QoG countries (around .5 and below) is about 0.1, while this event is to a higher place 0.iv in high-QoG countries (around .9 and to a higher place). This means that, in high-QoG countries such every bit Sweden and Norway, a one-unit increase in the item measuring normative views on government responsibility for protecting the surround is associated with most a half-unit increment in the item measuring preferences for government spending on the environment. In low-QoG countries, such as the Philippines and Thailand, a corresponding increase in normative views only yields a negligible effect of nigh 0.1. Moreover, the rather narrow confidence intervals suggest that at that place are meaning differences in the issue of normative views on spending preferences, even between countries with relatively small differences in the level of QoG. In determination, the plot clearly demonstrates that normative views have a substantial effect in high-QoG countries, thus supporting the notion that these views are considerably more than likely to translate into back up for increased government spending on the surround in countries where government institutions are impartial, effective, and incorrupt.
DISCUSSION
In this study, nosotros have shown that people who recall that it is the responsibility of government to protect the environment are as well mostly more than likely to back up increasing government spending on the environment. While this is in itself a adequately petty proposition, our results suggest that information technology comes with an important caveat, namely, that the extent to which normative views near government responsibility are translated into preferences for increased spending crucially depends on the quality of government institutions. In other words, people who think that it is the responsibility of government to protect the surroundings are more likely to support increasing government spending on the surroundings in countries where the quality of government is high, that is, where government institutions are impartial, constructive, and incorrupt. Conversely, in countries where QoG is low, people who think that it should be the responsibility of government to protect the environment are non substantially more than supportive of environmental spending than those who exercise not think that government should ultimately be responsible for protecting the environment. Our results therefore advise that low levels of QoG constitute potentially crucial obstacles for implementing costly environmental policies.
Our study constitutes an important contribution to the literature on environmental policy preferences, which has mainly focused on subjective measures such every bit political trust to explain public support. Political trust and QoG can both be viewed as indicators of a well-functioning regime, even so they capture different characteristics of regime. Offset, while people expect that politicians and political parties are partial, they do not have these expectations of the institutions that implement public policies. Rather, people look the institutions that uphold the laws and evangelize public services to do so in an impartial manner (Rothstein 2011). Second, while people tin distrust politicians and the parliamentary political system, government institutions that implement laws and policies tin can still exist impartial, effective, and trustworthy. Hence, levels of political trust do not necessarily reflect the overall quality of regime institutions. It is therefore important to distinguish betwixt legislative institutions such equally political parties or the parliament and implementing institutions such equally the legal system or the public administration, and to recognize that both can have important implications for people's ecology policy support. While previous research has shown that trust in politicians and the political (parliamentary) arrangement matters for policy back up, we contribute to the literature by showing that the quality of implementing government institutions is crucial for the germination of people's environmental policy attitudes. As a result, we contend that QoG captures unique features of the national context that future research on environmental attitudes and behavior should devote increasing attending to.
Our results also confirm the findings from previous studies identifying a gap between environmental business concern (or other related attitudes) and pro-environmental behaviors (see Kollmuss and Agyeman 2002), and the cross-national studies showing that the attitude-action gap is moderated by contextual factors (Johansson Sevä and Kulin 2018; Pisano and Lubell 2017; Tam and Chan 2018). However, whereas almost of these studies focus on pro-environmental behavior equally the primary event, we show that there also appears to be a gap betwixt ideology and policy support, whereby normative views about authorities are not necessarily translated into corresponding support for environmental policy. In line with previous studies, we show that this credo-support gap is highly contingent on contextual factors tied to the national context.
Our report also contributes to the cross-national research on the influence of political ideology on policy back up (east.thousand., Fairbrother 2016; McCright et al. 2016). While much of previous enquiry has used the contentious left–right scale or other broad measures of ideological orientations, nosotros have focused on a more limited simply crucial aspect of political credo, namely, normative views about the role of authorities. Another do good with our arroyo is that we take focused on normative views about the part of government specifically in relation to the environment. Nosotros thereby avoid the vagueness of the subjective left–right scale, which tin be particularly problematic in cross-national enquiry.
Furthermore, in dissimilarity to previous studies on back up for environmental policy, which to a corking extent have focused on the influence of subjective orientations in relation to politicians and the political arrangement, such as political trust (e.thou., Fairbrother 2016; Harring and Jagers 2013; Kollmann and Reichl 2015), we discover that the actual quality of government institutions that exercise public authorisation and implement policies matters for the translation of citizens' normative views into policy back up. In contrast to the few studies that focus on more than narrow aspects of QoG, such as corruption (eastward.g., Harring 2014), nosotros find a articulate bear on of the overall quality of authorities. Finally, while previous studies that focus on QoG primarily investigate its direct upshot on citizens' policy support, we provide evidence for an interaction issue where QoG constitutes a crucial moderator in the relationship between normative views almost government responsibility and back up for government spending in relation to the surroundings.
We identify a number of potential limitations, which require attention. First, some might enhance concerns about endogeneity issues and therefore invoke skepticism about studying the effects of certain attitudes on other attitudes. While this might indeed establish a valid criticism that often applies in survey inquiry, we believe that there is a stiff case for bold that normative views most government responsibility represent more fundamental ideological orientations that are causally prior to spending preferences. It simply makes little sense for individuals to support increasing authorities spending on the environment if they do not think that information technology should be the regime's responsibleness to protect the surround in the showtime place. Moreover, co-ordinate to Hainmueller and Hopkins (2014:243), "1 answer to concerns about endogeneity is to identify sets of attitudes that are quite stable, and perhaps less likely to exist endogenous." Considering the apparent stability of normative views about the authorities'southward responsibility to protect the environs, given that the large bulk of people in most countries hold these views (see Table 1), we believe that endogeneity issues are of less concern hither.
Second, another potential criticism is that in that location might be additional factors omitted in our assay that could evidence of import in explaining cross-national differences in the force of the relationship betwixt normative views and spending preferences. Considering that previous studies accept demonstrated that there is a human relationship betwixt political trust and policy attitudes, information technology would have been fruitful to include a standard measure of political trust in the analyses. However, the items included in the ISSP that measured people's perceptions in this regard were too narrow to capture political trust similar to previous inquiry. Time to come studies on environmental policy attitudes should therefore (when possible) aim to include characteristics of, and perceptions about, both legislative and implementing institutions, for instance by contrasting the furnishings of QoG against those of political trust.
Furthermore, previous research on ecology attitudes and behavior has identified generalized trust as an important determinant at both the private and the country level (Sønderskov 2008; 2011; Tam and Chan 2018). Unfortunately, data on generalized trust were not available in the ISSP module used in this study. Notwithstanding, since a growing literature views widespread generalized trust equally an event of high-quality government institutions (Charron and Rothstein 2018; Rothstein 2011; Rothstein and Stolle 2008), nosotros practice not expect that the inclusion of generalized trust would alter the interpretation of our main results, other than that it partly mediates the influence of QoG on the relationship between normative views and spending preferences.
Third, while the item capturing normative views on authorities responsibleness for protecting the environment focuses exclusively on the ecology damage of "industry," one could argue that it does not necessarily capture normative views about government responsibility for environmental protection in relation to other actors that behave in environmentally harmful means. The particular besides concerns a specific mode of environmental protection, namely, by "imposing strict laws," while disregarding other potential means of environmental protection. Due to the lack of variables in the ISSP dataset, a wider operationalization of "government responsibility for environmental protection" was not possible. However, nosotros believe that at that place are good reasons to expect this variable to be a reasonably proficient proxy for normative views about government responsibility for ecology protection in general. Since industry is responsible for a substantial share of all greenhouse gas emissions and other types of pollution, it is a central actor in terms of its environmental consequences. Therefore, people'south general views on government responsibility for environmental protection should very likely manifest peculiarly in relation to industry. Furthermore, since initiating and implementing laws constitutes the main musical instrument available to governments to regulate the actions of unlike actors in society, we argue that the item non simply captures respondents' more specific views on government legislation, but besides very likely constitutes a suitable indicator of views on government responsibility for environmental protection more generally.
As nosotros have demonstrated how and why people can neglect to support increasing government spending on the environs, even when they think that it should be the government's responsibility to protect the surroundings, our study constitutes a contribution to the understanding of the function of government in solving environmental collective-action bug (Mansbridge 2014; Ostrom 1998). However, our findings suggest that the part of government in protecting the surroundings stretches far beyond the design and enactment of constructive environmental policies; for countries to successfully implement environmental policies with broad public support, government institutions in general (e.g., public service providers, the bureaucratic and the legal systems besides the police) have to be impartial, efficient, and incorrupt. If government institutions do not exhibit these traits, even citizens who, every bit a general principle, recall that it should be the regime's responsibility to protect the surroundings might nonetheless oppose increasing public spending on the environment.
ane These studies are in line with other research showing that different forms of trust matter for environmental policy back up. For instance, several studies have institute that generalized or interpersonal trust is associated with the general willingness to make economic sacrifices to protect the environment (Fairbrother 2016) besides as support for physical policies such as carbon taxes (Harring and Jagers 2013). Furthermore, withal other studies have shown that generalized trust is besides linked to citizens' efforts to influence politicians and political controlling in a more than environmentally friendly direction through civic appointment and participation (Johansson Sevä and Kulin 2018; Tam and Chan 2018).
ii In a study of the social and political foundations of sustainability, Whitford and Wong (2009) fail to find a clear relationship betwixt democratization and wide measures of sustainability, concluding that the role of political systems for the sustainability of societies is often overstated. However, the lack of a relationship betwixt the degree of democratization and sustainability does non necessarily imply that the political system is irrelevant for the ecology outcomes of societies. Given that the degree of democratization in a society does not necessarily reverberate the quality of government institutions, since there are no guarantees that autonomous institutions will adhere to the principles of impartiality and fairness, a case tin be made that other aspects of the political arrangement (e.g., QoG) can have important consequences for sustainability and other ecology performance indicators, irrespective of the degree of democratization. In fact, previous studies on the human relationship between democratization and government quality often observe that this relationship is surprisingly weak (Montinola and Jackman 2002; Sung 2004), thus suggesting that the quality of government institutions constitutes a unique feature of the political system with potentially crucial implications for environmental outcomes.
3 In the analysis, we identified a small number of countries that were assessed every bit problematic. In the original ISSP dataset, the countries Georgia and Venezuela were included. Notwithstanding, due to missing QoG data, nosotros excluded Georgia from our analyses. Moreover, due to nonsensical outlier issues with respect to certain items, nosotros besides excluded Venezuela.
4 While the item capturing spending preferences (dependent variable) is an ordinal-scale variable, nosotros used it every bit an interval-scale variable in the linear multilevel regression analyses. In survey research, this is common do, given that the variable is normally distributed, which nosotros confirmed based on pooled every bit well as within-country frequency distributions of the dependent variable (not reported here).
5 In a series of analyses (non reported here) we too tested boosted individual-level controls (e.thousand., political trust, perceived corruption among politicians and public officials, political ideology/party voting); still, the inclusion of these variables did not affect our chief results. As the number of non-responses was high in the political ideology/party voting variable, and the wording of other items was far from platonic, we did not include them in the reported analysis.
vi Data from the World Bank were retrieved from https://data.worldbank.org. Due to missing data in the World Depository financial institution datasets, GDP per capita (PPP adjusted) for Taiwan was retrieved from the International Budgetary Fund (https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2015/01/weodata/alphabetize.aspx), while public spending for Taiwan (2014) was retrieved from the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economical Freedom (https://www.heritage.org/alphabetize/explore?view=by-variables).
Source: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00207659.2019.1582964
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