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Title: From Awareness to Action The role of Informational Shocks in Demand for Environmental Regulation
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2015
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Abstract: Protecting the environment is often plagued by collective action problems, and so it is important to understand what motivates politicians to act. This paper dwells on whether public information can influence demand in the population, and, if so, what are the relevant channels. I exploit the publishing in 1962 of the influential environmental science book Silent Spring - and the availability of U.S. congressional roll-call votes and census data, - to analyze how demand for environmental regulation changes in response to a radical informational shock. I define demand in terms of the total number of ‘green’ votes in Congress. My analysis has two steps. First, I evaluate the impact of my shock on average propensity for politicians to vote in favor of ‘green’ regulation, and find effects between 5 and 33pp. Then, I look for heterogeneous effects of the shock, by including interactions with education, income, and exposure, and propose a framework to interpret my findings. My results suggest that public information, education and income interact in the demand for environmental regulation.
User Submitted?: No
Authors: Yangua, Maria, L
Publisher: UCLA
Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS
Topics: Natural Resource Management, Other
Countries: United States