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Economic Considerations and Public Support for Environment Policy in East and Southeast Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Mi Jeong Shin Open the ORCID record for Mi Jeong Shin [Opens in a new window]  and
Jia Chen
Mi Jeong Shin
Affiliation:
School of Public Economics and Administration, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai, China
Jia Chen*
Affiliation:
School of International and Public Affairs, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
*
Corresponding author: Jia Chen; Email: jiachen_sjtu@sjtu.edu.cn
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Abstract

The “environment–economy trade-off” is a key question in research on public opinion on environmental policies. While evidence from Western economies suggests that individuals are more supportive of environmental initiatives when the macroeconomic situation is favorable, little is known about how environmental policy preferences are shaped by economic factors in East and Southeast Asian countries. Using a survey dataset consisting of 12 countries based on the fourth wave of the Asian Barometer Survey (ABS), we investigate how environmental policy preferences are associated with multiple aspects of economic consideration. In a pooled multilevel analysis, we find that personal economic conditions and perceptions are more consistently associated with greater support for environmental initiatives than objective and subjective national economic conditions. However, an analysis of the heterogeneous effect shows that the effect of individual economic situations is only partially identifiable among lower-middle or upper-income countries in our sample, signaling the complexity of qualifying the relationship between economic considerations and environmental attitudes in a cross-country context.

Keywords

East and Southeast Asiaenvironment–economy trade-offenvironmental attitudespocketbook and sociotropic economic considerations
Type
Research Note
Information
Journal of East Asian Studies , First View , pp. 1 - 18
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The East Asia Institute

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