It would feel weird to not drive my car! Exploring the role of habits in public policy acceptance of carbon taxations - Ambio
link.springer.com
This study aims to expand the understanding of public acceptance of carbon taxes by exploring the role of habits. Habits play a pivotal role in guiding our behaviors and reasoning and can even influence our self perception and identity but remain an underexplored variable in relation to public policy acceptance. We employed a large scale (N > 5200) national survey to measure public acceptance of higher carbon taxation in Sweden, also capturing car driving habits, car usage, and other relevant variables. The findings show that habit strength is negatively correlated with policy acceptance, regardless of self reported driving distance, while also appearing to moderate the relationship between policy acceptance and environmental concern and political leaning, variables previously shown to be of relevance. The study suggests that the influence of habits needs to be recognized to better understand the formation of climate policy acceptance, and exploring this perspective paves the way for future research.

This study aims to expand the understanding of public acceptance of carbon taxes by exploring the role of habits. Habits play a pivotal role in guiding our behaviors and reasoning and can even influence our self perception and identity but remain an underexplored variable in relation to public policy acceptance. We employed a large scale (N > 5200) national survey to measure public acceptance of higher carbon taxation in Sweden, also capturing car driving habits, car usage, and other relevant variables. The findings show that habit strength is negatively correlated with policy acceptance, regardless of self reported driving distance, while also appearing to moderate the relationship between policy acceptance and environmental concern and political leaning, variables previously shown to be of relevance. The study suggests that the influence of habits needs to be recognized to better understand the formation of climate policy acceptance, and exploring this perspective paves the way for future research.

  • kibiz0rEnglish
    4·
    5 days ago

    We saw even with something as simple as putting a piece of cloth over your dirty germ-filled mouth, people would rather be “normal” than safe.

    As the sociologist Brooke Harrington puts it, if there was an E = mc2 of social science, it would be SD > PD, “social death is more frightening than physical death.”

    • VeganPizza69 Ⓥ@lemmy.vgOPEnglish
      2·
      5 days ago

      Yes, it’s a decent statement. I have a specific dislike of TMT main authors for their failure to make it critical.

      If SD is the most important, than we have to recognize that the culture wars should be the main focus, the culture wars are the class wars. We need an anti-conservative dominant culture to survive extinction.