Environmental Dilemmas and Policy Design

About this book

Provides empirical evidence that most people are willing to contribute to the reduction of environmental pollution and degradation, but that their actions are highly influenced by the social context of the problems they face and how they resolve tensions between self-interest and moral choice.

Contents

Preface; Part I. Background: 1. Environmental pollution as a problem of collective action; 1.1. Can something be done?; 1.2. Environmental dilemmas and the logic of collective action; 1.3. Surveying environmental dilemmas from the actor's perspective: rational choice; 1.4. How motives speak to preferences; 1.5. Non-equivalent dilemmas and reported behaviour; 1.6. Policies of self regulation in the Netherlands; 1.7. Moral commitment in environmental dilemmas: conditional or unconditional?; 1.8. Determinants of cooperation in environmental dilemmas and policy design; 2. A Dutch approach: self regulation as a policy concept; 2.1. Introduction; 2.2. Dutch environmental policy and the idea of self regulation; 2.3. The social instruments; 2.4. An environmental ethos and the social dilemma; 2.5. Self regulation: compliance-oriented or virtue-based?; 3. The actor's perspective on collective action; 3.1. The subjectivity of the actor in rational choice theory; 3.2. Problems of collective action; 3.3. Social dilemmas; 3.4. The actor's perspective; Part II. The Survey: 4. Preference orderings and measurement; 4.1. Three potential social dilemmas; 4.2. Measuring preference orderings; 4.3. Three different environmental problems; 4.4. Avoiding response effects; 5. Rational choice; 5.1. Conditions of rational choice; 5.2. The dominance rule of rational choice; 5.3. Choice of strategy; 5.4. The robustness of the dominance rule; 5.5. Conclusion; 6. Consistency of motives and preferences; 6.1. A model of reasoned choice; 6.2. The motives of Valuation and Willingness; 6.3. The test of consistent preferences; 6.4. Consistent preferences in the three cases; 6.5. Does motive-preference consistency matter?; 6.6. Conclusion; 7. The non-equivalence of the cases; 7.1. Hard and easy cases of the dilemma; 7.2. The model of the hardest case; 7.3. The scalability of the cases; 7.4. Conclusion; 8. Reported behaviour; 8.1. Determinants of behaviour; 8.2. The sociocultural model; 8.3. An alternative model; 8.4. From motives to behaviour; Part III. Conclusions: Theory and Policy: 9. Do people accept self regulation policy?; 9.1. Introduction to Part III; 9.2. Acceptance and agreement; 9.3. The acceptance of legal regulation and self regulation; 9.4. Conclusion; 10. Do people agree with the environmental ethos?; 10.1. Introduction; 10.2. The two stages of the environmental ethos; 10.3. Knaves, pawns or knights?; 10.4. The ethical interpretation of motives and preferences; 10.5. The agreement response; 10.6. Acceptance and agreement: overview; 11. Moral commitment and rational cooperation; 11.1. Ranking preference orderings; 11.2. The meta-ranking approach; 11.3. Enlightened self-interest and moral commitment; 11.4. Consistent preferences in the meta-ranking; 11.5. An environmental meta-ranking; 12. Reciprocity and cooperation in environmental dilemmas; 12.1. The puzzle of unconditional cooperation; 12.2. The reciprocity thesis; 12.3. Cost of cooperation and conditionalities in environmental dilemmas; 13. Assessing self regulation policies; 13.1. The context of environmental dilemmas; 13.2. Consistent ethical cooperation; 13.3. Background features of hard and easy cases; 13.4. Mapping problems and the salience of the environmental ethos; 13.5. Individual cost and collective gain; 13.6. Comparing motives in the polar cases; 13.7. The dimension of private significance; 13.8. Self regulation policy: symbolic or real?; 13.9. A non-moralistic approach to environmental responsibility; 13.10. Self regulation in proportion to facilitation; Bibliography; Index.

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Biography

Dr Huib Pellikaan is a lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Leiden University. He is currently the managing editor of Acta Politica, the journal of the Dutch Association for the Science of Politics. Robert van der Veen is a lecturer in Political Theory in the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of Between Exploitation and Communism (1991), as well as the editor of Basic Income on the Agenda (with Loek Groot, 2000). He has contributed articles to many journals including Economics and Philosophy, The British Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Political Philosophy and Acta Politica.