Redefining Rational Choice in Environmental Affairs

Abstract

Environmental Dilemmas and Policy Design. By Huib Pellikaan, Robert J. van der Veen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 247 pp., $65.00 cloth (ISBN: 0-521-62156-9), $23.00 paper (ISBN: 0-521-62764-8). In Environmental Dilemmas and Policy Design , Huib Pellikaan and Robert van der Veen present an empirical study of environmental attitudes in the Netherlands. They use the results of this study to assess the Dutch government's attempts to foster “self-regulation policy” for certain environmental issues. Pellikaan and van der Veen rely heavily on rational choice theory in their methodology, and the language throughout the book is rather technical. Therefore, the book will be most useful to specialists in rational choice theory or to scholars interested in analyzing collective action problems through the lens of rational choice. Environmental Dilemmas and Policy Design is structured in three parts. The first section provides background to collective action theory and Dutch self-regulation policies. The second section provides a detailed description of the authors' survey of environmental attitudes in the Netherlands. The third section attempts to assess self-regulation policies and asks larger theoretical questions related to moral commitment and collective action problems. Although the book as a whole is too technical and the language too inaccessible for most general classroom use, the study does make an important contribution to the evolving literature that critiques traditional assumptions of rational choice and collective action theory. (For an introduction to rational choice theory, see Arrow 1963 and Riker 1990. For an introduction to critiques of rational choice, see Sen 1997.) Most of the literature on rational choice theory and collective action assumes that rational individuals will value effectiveness and efficiency above all. …