Push, Pull, or Inform - an Empirical Taxonomy of Environmental Policy Support in Sweden

Abstract

Research on environmental policy support utilises different categorisations of policies, for example, differentiating between policies assumed to be perceived as rewarding or punishing. Do citizens' perception of environmental policies also lend itself to this categorisation? Based on an exhaustive sample of active policies in Sweden, this study presents a taxonomy of environmental policy support in Sweden. A fairly representative Swedish sample (N = 2911) rated the acceptability of 44 environmental policies. Exploratory factor analysis indicated that participants' acceptability of policies forms three categories: push policies consisting of regulatory and market-based disincentives, pull policies consisting mainly of market-based incentives, and informational policies, such as ecolabeling. Sociodemographics had small but consistent effects on attitudes towards the three categories, while political ideology had a larger effect across the categories. This study indicates that current academic categorisations may not adequately capture laypeople's perceptions, and discusses the importance of research on driving mechanisms behind the current taxonomy.