What instruments work best for you to live more environmentally friendly?
Researchers at LTU will study how a country´s political system and economic dependence on environmentally damaging natural resources, affect people´s attitude to the instruments that are introduced, to get them to live more evnvironmental friendly.The countries included in the study are Sweden, Norway, Australia and New Zealand .
Research will take four years and is in collaboration with the University of Gothenburg. It is Professor Sverker Jagers at LTU, PhD Simon Matti, LTU and Johan Martinsson at Gothenburg University, who will study how it is that people with the same attitudes accept different types of political instruments for environmental improvements.
It is a sensitive issue that politicals control how people will act in their private lives in terms such as waste separation, and to travel more by public transport to save the environment. The choice of instruments is essential.
- In some countries it is easier to accept legislation when environmental policies is to be introduced, in other countries people better prefere environmental charges, this, despite the fact that these people basically have the same attitudes, says Simon Matti.
The aspect that the research team now want to study is whether, for example Norway's economic dependence on gas and oil, as well as Australia's economic dependence on the coal mining industry, has bearing on which instruments people accept to be implemented in the country, when environmental improvements are to be done.
Another aspect to be studied is whether the political system itself, with the Anglo-Saxon culture in Australia and New Zealand and the Scandinavian political culture in Norway and Sweden, affects an individual's acceptance of different types of instruments.
Several thousand of individuals in each of the countries will participate in surveys, and the researchers also intend to conduct experiments at individual level. A number of people 50-70, will also undergo a survey of attitudes linked to scenarios in which various contextual factors can be varied.
- The need for this research are enormous. There is no such comparative study between different countries. We know how the attitude towards different types of instruments for environmental improvements may differ, but not how the individual's environment itself affects attitude, as say political context or the nation's dependence on environmentally damaging natural resources.
The goal of this research is to develop a model that can be used so that it provides a better basis for policy makers when they choose type of instruments.
- In this way environmental political instruments have a more long-term effect. It will lower costs and the politicians do not lose their legitimacy. What triggers people to follow a discipline is everything for this to work, says Simon Matti.
