Individual Factors Influencing Acceptability for Environmental Policies: A Review and Research Agenda

Abstract

To facilitate an understanding of why some environmental policies are acceptable to private citizens and why some are not, we review individual factors that influence the acceptability of environmental policy measures. The factors are categorized in demographic factors, such as age and gender, personal factors such as values and ideology, and policy specific beliefs such as perceptions of how fair or effective a policy is. The reviewed studies indicate that demographic factors generally have small effects on acceptability, that ideology seems to be a consistent predictor among personal factors, and that policy specific beliefs may be effective in explaining acceptability but that the relative importance of the specific beliefs may vary between policy contexts. However, we note methodological concerns in the field of environmental policy acceptability that limit the conclusions that can be drawn from reviews or meta-analyses. We end by giving suggestions for how this field can move forward to provide policy makers with more detailed tools on how to design acceptable environmental policies, for example by introducing more experimental designs, and the standardization of targeting factors, as well as acceptability measures and the improved categorizations of policy tools.