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What's in it for me? Self-interest and preferences for distribution of costs and benefits of energy efficiency policies

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  • Fanghella, Valeria
  • Faure, Corinne
  • Guetlein, Marie-Charlotte
  • Schleich, Joachim

Abstract

Public acceptability appears an essential condition for the success of low-carbon transition policies. In this paper, we investigate the role of self-interest on citizens' preferences for the distribution of costs and environmental benefits of energy efficiency policies. Using a discrete choice experiment on nationally representative household samples of Sweden, Italy, and the United Kingdom, we first investigate preferences for national burden-sharing rules and for the distribution of environmental benefits accruing primarily in rural and/or urban areas. We examine the role of self-interest and self-serving bias in a correlational manner by looking at the effects of income and location of residency on preferences for these policy attributes. Moreover, we investigate the effect of self-serving bias on preferences for burden-sharing rules in a causal manner by experimentally priming randomly assigned groups of participants to feel either rich or poor. Our results suggest that the accountability rule is the most popular and the equal-amount rule the least popular burden-sharing rule. Further, policies with environmental benefits accruing primarily in rural areas are least preferred. We find some evidence for self-interest, especially through our correlational approach. Finally, across country samples, our results reveal heterogeneity in preferences for policy attributes and in the prevalence of self-interest.

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  • Fanghella, Valeria & Faure, Corinne & Guetlein, Marie-Charlotte & Schleich, Joachim, 2023. "What's in it for me? Self-interest and preferences for distribution of costs and benefits of energy efficiency policies," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 204(PA).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:204:y:2023:i:pa:s0921800922003202
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107659
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