Public Policy Support Research Articles

Promoting systems thinking and pro-environmental policy support through serious games

We evaluated whether teaching the public about the “critical zone”–the Earth’s outer skin, critical to all life—via a digital serious game can affect adults’ systems thinking about the environment and support policies to protect the environment. An experiment (N = 152) compared the effects of playing “CZ Investigator” versus viewing a static website on systems thinking about the Food-Energy-Water (FEW) nexus and support for relevant public policies. The serious game had the strongest effects on our outcomes of interest for those participants with less past science education. For these individuals, the serious game, relative to the static website, increased perceptions of the strength of interconnections across food, energy, and water systems (p < .01) and support for policies that regulated human impacts on the environment (p < .01). Mediation analysis revealed that increases in systems thinking explain increases in policy support. This group of users also indicated that the game was easier, more enjoyable, and more effective for learning than the website. Mediation analyses also revealed that perceived learning effectiveness was a stronger mediator than ease and enjoyment effects of the game on systems thinking and policy support. These results are valuable for environmental education because understanding interconnections within complex systems is vital for solving environmental problems, particularly for learners with less background in science.

Relevance of social capital in preserving subjective well‐being in the face of the COVID‐19 pandemic

AbstractThis paper analyzes the changes in subjective well‐being (SWB) in 11 Latin American cities at the end of the acceleration phase of the COVID‐19 pandemic, the variables that influenced these changes, and the role of the public support policies and the social capital on SWB recovery. This study, the second of a two‐phase research project, is a survey‐based comparative analysis. The 5604 survey responses obtained included 3279 observations from the research project's preceding phase, and 2325 observations conducted as part of the second project phase and current study. A multivariate linear regression model was used to evaluate the impact of the different variables related to COVID‐19 on people's SWB. Results show that the most significant positive impacts on SWB, are attributed to social capital, particularly family and social cohesion. The study confirms that the level of SWB is strongly associated with personality traits, health, and key variables such as age, marital status, and income. The different measures established to control the pandemic have not remedied the negative impacts of COVID‐19 on people's SWB. However, an increase in different degrees of SWB was observed in 10 out of the 11 cities between the initial survey and the follow‐up survey.

Attitudes, Involvement and Public Support for Pest Control Methods

Public support is crucial to the widespread application of pest control methods both in the form of political support and, where people have direct agency in control methods, compliance with the demands of the methods. It is commonplace for personal behaviours reflecting political support for public policies to be presumed to depend on relevant attitudes, beliefs and values of the person. The finite amount of attention and cognitive effort each person possesses implies that attention and effort are rationed, indicating that changing behaviour requires that the targeted individual is attentive and willing to invest the required cognitive effort; that is, they are motivated to consider new information and, subsequently, to reviewing their attitudes and behaviour. We examine whether attitudes and involvement (a measure of motivation) together provide better predictions of public support for pest control methods than attitudes alone, using the distribution of baits containing sodium fluoroacetate (1080) in New Zealand to control invasive, non-native rats and possums as a case study. We found the novel combination of involvement and attitudes did provide significantly better predictions of an individual’s support for using 1080 for the purpose of environmental conservation, and their pest control behaviour, than did attitudes alone.

Organizational practices as drivers of societal change: contextual spillover effects of environmental management on employees’ public sphere pro-environmental behavior

PurposeThis study aims to draw on goal contagion theory to examine how organizations shape the pro-environmental behavior of their employees. It extends the scope of analysis beyond organizational boundaries and illustrates the external effects of organizational practices that support societal change. The fundamental research question is whether perceived environmental management practices strengthen employees’ public sphere pro-environmental behavior.Design/methodology/approachTo test the research hypothesis, the authors combined survey and quasi-experimental evidence from two independent field studies. Both studies were carried out in the tourist industry in Germany. In the first study, the authors used a cross-sectional research design with data from 206 employees to examine whether perceived environmental management practices are positively associated with employees’ public sphere pro-environmental behavior. For causal inference, the authors conducted a second study involving a natural pretest-posttest quasi-experiment with a treatment and control group.FindingsThe results of the cross-sectional study revealed that perceived environmental management practices are positively associated with employees’ public sphere pro-environmental behavior. The findings of the natural quasi-experiment confirmed the hypothesized causation and minimized the probability of alternative explanations.Practical implicationsThe study has important implications for policymakers, since the support and acceptance of public policies is a prerequisite for the realization of collective political action. By highlighting the potential of organizational practices to strengthen employees’ public sphere pro-environmental behavior, this research illustrates how rules and regulations that oblige firms to intensify their environmental protection practices might not only reduce the ecological footprint of organizations but also help cultivate societal acceptance of and support for environmental protection.Social implicationsThis study illustrates how employees that align their normative goals in accordance with the implicit goals of organizational practices can become agents for corresponding societal changes. This perspective highlights the integration of structure and agency and underscores the idea that societal change works across macro-, meso- and micro-social levels.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, the investigation is the first that examines the relationship between perceived environmental management practices and employees’ public sphere pro-environmental behavior. Herewith, it sheds light on a thus far overlooked mechanism for how organizations stimulate societal change.

What is policy content and how is the public's policy support? A policy cognition study based on natural language processing and social psychology.

Public policy plays a critical role in coordinating social resources, providing public services, and promoting public value. However, few studies have systematically investigated the public's policy cognition from the objective aspect of policy content and the subjective aspect of target audience's policy support. To fill this gap, we explore the policy content via natural language processing and also policy support from the perspective of social psychology. Specifically, regarding the policy content analysis, we collect over one thousand policy documents and design an annotation system by analyzing the policy content, basic structure and text features, and then utilize text classification and information retrieval models based on the Chinese large-scale pre-trained models. Moreover, according to the policy tools identified in the content analysis, our paper investigates the audience's policy support for these tools and its influential factors. Based on a sample of 476 respondents from the whole country, we adopt the ordinary least square method to explore the key factors of policy support for supply, demand and environmental tools from three variables: political trust, policy effectiveness and knowledge of policies. This study contributes to existing literature by forming a structured understanding of policies and exploring public support for policy tools, which could benefit the practitioners during the policy-making process and also enhance successfully policy implementation.

Food security of people with celiac disease in the Republic of Moldova through prism of public policies.

Food security is an important lever for the implementation of rights-based legislation, policies, and programs, while being a public health and socio-economic priority. Foodborne illnesses have a major impact on public health, and nutritional interventions are essential therapeutic strategies to combat them. Gluten ingestion has been linked to several clinical disorders, collectively called gluten-related disorders. The most serious of these is celiac disease. The only way to treat celiac disease is to stick to a gluten-free diet for life. Following a strict diet is also the only way to prevent the long-term consequences of the disease. Public policies are essential to ensure the food security of people with gluten-related disorders. The aim of the research is to assess the level of care for people with celiac disease in the Republic of Moldova, in terms of public policies, to ensure a sustainable sector that effectively satisfies the food security of people with disorders associated with gluten consumption. To assess the level of care for people with gluten-related disorders, the working algorithm was taken, with reference to global public policies in support of people with celiac disease, developed and validated by Falcomer et al., Focused on 6 items. The results of the study showed that the Republic of Moldova does not have adequate policy support to ensure food security for people with gluten-related disorders, which poses major challenges and, as a result, may increase the complications of these problems.

Mobility management – Hybrid model of congestion pricing

The sudden development of urbanization in cities consequently affects the degree of motorization of the population. Due to the imbalance between traffic demands and traffic supply, cities, and especially their central city zones (CZ), face the problem of traffic congestion. Management of traffic demands by applying the congestion pricing policy (CP) can significantly contribute to reducing traffic congestion and its negative impacts. However, after insufficient public and political support for the CP policy during implementation, as well as the application of the MC policy, which is based only on research in hypothetical situations, a hybrid management model was proposed. Bearing in mind the above, the objective of this study is to analyze the factors that influence the acceptability of the hybrid model, which represents combination of the previously mentioned policies (CP+MC). The obtained results indicate that the hybrid model can represents an adequate solution that would reduce the movement of passenger cars in CZ and increase the acceptance of such a policy among the public.

Changes in public support for alcohol policies in NSW, Australia, 2013-2019.

Alcohol contributes to significant health, social and economic burdens worldwide, but evidence-based policy options can reduce the harm associated with alcohol use. The aim of this paper is to understand factors influencing public support for various alcohol policies in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, and to determine any change over time. An online survey of adults in NSW, in 2013 (n = 2482), 2016 (n = 1585) and 2019 (n = 1601), assessed support for alcohol policies. Multivariable logistic regression models examined the change in support over time, adjusting for demographics, alcohol consumption, smoking status and knowledge of alcohol as a risk factor for cancer. Most participants (68-72%) supported policies preventing underage internet users from exposure to alcohol advertising, and banning alcohol sponsorship of underage music and sporting events. Fiscal policies and restrictions on the number of alcohol outlets were the least supported policies (<40% support). Compared with 2013, participants in 2016 and 2019 were less likely to support policies increasing price, applying a volumetric tax and reducing the number of alcohol outlets. In 2019, more than 55% of respondents were aware that alcohol was a cancer risk factor, and knowledge of that relationship was associated with an increased likelihood of support for alcohol policies. Support was greatest for alcohol harm-reduction policies that had less impact on an individual's drinking. Overall, support for alcohol policies in NSW is not increasing. Initiatives to raise awareness about the health consequences of alcohol use, together with effective alcohol policies, are needed to counter industry influence on decision makers and negative public discourse.

Party over pandemic: Polarized trust in political leaders and experts explains public support for COVID-19 policies

Two experiments examined the polarization of public support for COVID-19 policies due to people’s (lack of) trust in political leaders and nonpartisan experts. In diverse samples in the United States (Experiment 1; N = 1,802) and the United Kingdom (Experiment 2; N = 1,825), participants evaluated COVID-19 policies that were framed as proposed by ingroup political leaders, outgroup political leaders, nonpartisan experts, or, in the United States, a bipartisan group of political leaders. At the time of the study in April 2020, COVID-19 was an unfamiliar and shared threat. Therefore, there were theoretical reasons suggesting that attitudes toward COVID-19 policy may not have been politically polarized. Yet, our results demonstrated that even relatively early in the pandemic people supported policies from ingroup political leaders more than the same policies from outgroup leaders, extending prior research on how people align their policy stances to political elites from their own parties. People also trusted experts and ingroup political leaders more than they did outgroup political leaders. Partly because of this polarized trust, policies from experts and bipartisan groups were more widely supported than policies from ingroup political leaders. These results illustrate the potentially detrimental role political leaders may play and the potential for effective leadership by bipartisan groups and nonpartisan experts in shaping public policy attitudes during crises.

Government sponsorship and innovation: the Gazelle Plan in China's Zhongguancun Science Park

Promoting high‐growth enterprises' innovation performance has become an explicit policy focus in recent years. This study extends the extant literature on the effects of public funding schemes by focusing on an under‐researched sponsorship scheme designed to develop the financial market and mobilize external finance for innovation. We posit that external finance has positive and moderating effects on innovation. The positive effect improves firms' innovation performance; the moderating effect diminishes when the amount of external finance received by firms exceeds a threshold level. We further hypothesize that sponsorship improves firms' innovation performance by enhancing the positive and diminishing moderating effects. To test our hypotheses, we selected Zhongguancun Science Park's Gazelle Plan as the study context. We constructed a balanced panel of 37,270 firm‐year observations and adopted difference‐in‐differences and panel threshold models to provide an evidenced‐based approach for refining public support policies for firm innovation. The results suggest that the Gazelle Plan has limited effects on enhancing the positive and moderating effects of venture capital and promoting new product sales. Implications and suggestions for academia and policymakers are provided.

Multi-level blame attribution and public support for EU welfare policies

Since the Eurozone crisis, intense political debate has resurfaced about deservingness judgements in European solidarity. To contribute to this debate, this article proposes a refined concept of ‘multi-level blame attribution’. It postulates that public support for EU-level welfare policies crucially depends on how citizens attribute responsibility for economic outcomes across different levels of agency. Results from an original public opinion survey conducted in 10 European Union member states demonstrate that attributing blame to individuals decreases citizens’ willingness to show solidarity with needy Europeans, whereas attributing blame to the EU increases support. The role of attributing blame to national governments is dependent on the country context; beliefs that worse economic outcomes are caused by national governments’ policy decisions tend to dampen support for EU targeted welfare policies only in the Nordic welfare states. The article concludes by discussing the implications of multi-level blame attribution for the formation of public attitudes towards European solidarity.

Ecological ceiling and social floor: public support for eco-social policies in Sweden

In this article, we investigate public support for eco-social policies combining goals of social justice and ecological sustainability. Eco-social policies contribute both to providing a social floor or redistributing resources to where they are needed and to respecting an ecological ceiling by keeping human activities within ecological limits. We discuss five such policies and highlight arguments for and against defining them as eco-social policies: a maximum income, a wealth tax, a basic income, a working time reduction and a meat tax. Asking what the social and individual determinants of supporting these policies are, we use 2020 data from a representative survey in Sweden containing information about how respondents evaluate the policies. We run regression analyses to estimate the effects on these evaluations and test for socio-economic, knowledge-based and value-based factors. Results show that (1) in Sweden a working time reduction is the most supported eco-social policy; (2) political left orientation increases support for all five eco-social policies; (3) socio-economic factors have effects on wealth tax, maximum income and working time reduction; and (4) knowledge-based factors are more associated with the meat tax. Thus, socio-economic and knowledge-based models have the most significance for policies that could be understood as being either social or environmental, while value-based models have significance across potentially perceived policy divides and hence to a greater extent explain support for policies targeting an ecological ceiling and a social floor.

Determinants of Citizen Acceptance of White-Collar Crime in China

Existing research on public attitudes toward white-collar crime focuses almost exclusively on Western and Latin American societies. Using data from the seventh wave (2018) of the World Values Survey (WVS) for China, this study confirms the importance of several demographic, value, and belief factors in forming citizens’ attitudes toward white-collar crime, yet show some distinguished patterns in the Chinese context, calling for culture-specific and evidence-informed initiatives to gain public support for white-collar crime policies.

Morality in the echo chamber: The relationship between belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories and public health support and the mediating role of moral identity and morality-as-cooperation across 67 countries.

Believing in conspiracy theories is a major problem, especially in the face of a pandemic, as these constitute a significant obstacle to public health policies, like the use of masks and vaccination. Indeed, during the COVID-19 pandemic, several ungrounded explanations regarding the origin of the virus or the effects of vaccinations have been rising, leading to vaccination hesitancy or refusal which poses as a threat to public health. Recent studies have shown that in the core of conspiracy theories lies a moral evaluation component; one that triggers a moral reasoning which reinforces the conspiracy itself. To gain a better understanding of how conspiracy beliefs about COVID-19 affect public health containment behaviors and policy support via morality-relevant variables, we analysed comprehensive data from the International Collaboration on the Social & Moral Psychology (ICSMP) of COVID-19, consisting of 49.965 participants across 67 countries. We particularly explored the mediating role of two levels of morality: individual and group-based morality. Results show that believing in conspiracy theories reduces adoption of containment health-related behaviors and policy support of public health measures, but moral identity and morality-as-cooperation significantly mediate this relationship. This means that beliefs in conspiracy theories do not simply constitute antecedents of cognitive biases or failures, nor maladaptive behaviors based on personality traits, but are morally infused and should be dealt as such. Based on our findings, we further discuss the psychological, moral, and political implications of endorsement of conspiracy theories in the era of the pandemic.

Political stability, trust and support for public policies: a survey experiment examining source effects for COVID-19 interventions in Australia and Hong Kong

Abstract What is the relationship between political stability, trust, and source effects on support for public policies? In this article, we examine how source type (and the trust respondents have in different sources) impacts support for new policies and the degree to which this impact is moderated by political stability. This article reports the results of a survey experiment administered simultaneously in Australia and Hong Kong in late 2020 examining source effects on public attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccination and testing policies. For each case, the analyses compare source effects between a lesser trusted source (government) and a more trusted source (medical scientists). The study also compares these effects between cases, contrasting an environment of continuing political stability (Australia) with one of decreasing political stability (Hong Kong). Australian respondents tended to have similar attitudes toward policies regardless of the source, while Hong Kong respondents looked significantly more favorably on policies put forward by medical scientists than those put forward by the government. The results show that source effects can be moderated by political context—a finding that holds implications for the design of comparative studies about public trust and political legitimacy in settings where policy development relies on scientific input.

Impact of mining-induced deforestation on soil surface temperature and carbon stocks: A case study using remote sensing in the Amazon rainforest

The Amazon rainforest is one of the most important ecosystems on the planet; however, the environmental pressure created by anthropic activities require monitoring of this critical biome. In this study, we assessed the evolution of deforestation in an open mine pit and its impact on surface environment (i.e., temperature and carbon stocks) using remote sensing techniques. The study was carried out on an area of 11,283.3 ha in the municipality of Marabá, Pará State, Brazil, where the “Salobo” copper mine is located. A temporal analysis was conducted, using Landsat satellite images (2005–2020). Subsequently, the Land Surface Temperature (LST) and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) of the deforested area were determined. Mining-induced deforestation has expanded from 0.9 ha in 2005 to 2214 ha in 2020 with an increase in surface temperature of 10 °C in the period. The temperature difference between the pit and the adjacent forest ranged from 30 to 40 °C over the 15 years, while the temperature at the forest edges rose by 4 °C. The correlation coefficient between exposed soil temperatures and mining deforestation was 0.66. CO2 emissions, increasing from 0.005 Tg CO2 in 2005 to 1.82 Tg CO2 in 2020 due to mining deforestation. The findings demonstrate the significant environmental impact of deforestation, which may also have an influence on local climate. The results can provide scientific support for public policies aimed at mitigating the issue.

An analysis of Covid-19 deaths and equality in Northern Ireland.

ObjectivesThe overarching aim is to extend understanding of Covid-19 and non Covid-19 mortality during the pandemic. For the first two waves of the pandemic in Northern Ireland, the study addressed evidence gaps for both Covid-19 and non Covid-19 deaths in relation to equality group, health and socio-demographic characteristics. ApproachPrior to this research, mortality analyses in Northern Ireland during the pandemic had been largely based on information recorded on death certificates and information gaps remained. This research linked death records to extensive socio-demographic, health and equality group information, retrieved from the 2011 Census, providing a more comprehensive assessment of mortality. The research approach demonstrated innovative use of linked datasets in support of public policy. Findings also complement similar analysis published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Research questions were shaped and informed by information queries from a range of stakeholders including the Department of Health and elected officials. ResultsResults published to date are based on Covid-19 and non Covid-19 deaths occurring in the 7-month period between 1st March 2020 and 30th September 2020. We found that there was a 48% and 40% higher risk for persons self-reporting having a disability at the time of the 2011 Census (compared to ‘non-disabled’ people) for Covid-19 and non Covid-19 mortality respectively. After accounting for differences in age, sex and area of residence, there was no significant difference in risk of Covid-19 death, for the time period March to September 2020, for those who identified as Catholic at the time of the 2011 Census, compared to Protestants and other Christians. ConclusionThe research addresses priority evidence gaps identified by government officials and third sector policy leads. The depth of commentary provided within the report is enabling researchers and policy makers to gain greater familiarity with a key research resource. This will be instrumental in shaping future research through ADR Northern Ireland.

Multilevel causal attributions on transboundary risk: Effects on attributions of responsibility, psychological distance, and policy support.

This study used two randomized experiments in a prospective design (Study 1 N =297, Study 2 N =296) to examine how multilevel causal attribution dimensions (internal vs. external to an individual or a country) shape domestic and foreign policy support to counter transboundary risk. Results from Study 1 and 2 showed that external-country (vs. internal-country) causal attribution reduced perceptions of internal-country attributions of responsibility, which had a cross-lagged effect on support for domestic-industry policies to mitigate the risk. In contrast, perceptions of external-country attributions of responsibility increased support for foreign policies in a 2-week follow up. This study offers theoretical insights into the demarcation of multilevel causal attribution dimensions in studying media framing effects. It also highlights some important causal mechanisms of how media frames shape public support for policies aimed at transboundary risk mitigation.

Support for cancer prevention public health policies: results from a nationally representative sample of residents in the United States.

Assessing public support of health policies designed to reduce cancer risk is important for policy implementation. This study aimed to identify support for cancer prevention policies and factors associated with support. Data were obtained from the Health Information National Trends Survey. Support for three types of cancer prevention policies were evaluated: tobacco, alcohol, and junk food regulations. Linear and logistic regression analyses were employed to assess the relationship between support for the different types of policies and sociodemographic, lifestyle behaviors, and cancer beliefs. Certain policies, such as providing warning labels on cigarettes (69.9% support) and requiring specific health warnings on alcohol containers (65.1% support), were popular. Banning outdoor advertising of alcohol was not popular (34.4% support). There were individual differences associated with policy support. For example, respondents who were 75 years or older (B = 0.61, p < .001) or female (B = 0.14, p < .008) were more likely to support tobacco polices compared to their counterparts (i.e., younger or male). Respondents who identified as politically conservative (B = -0.20, p < .004) or those who endorsed high cancer fatalistic beliefs (e.g., there's not much you can do to lower your chances of getting cancer, B = -0.07, p < .012) were less likely to support alcohol policies compared to those who were liberal or had lower cancer fatalistic beliefs. Generally, support was high for most policy questions. However, support varied by different individual factors. The findings also highlight that there may be opportunities to increase understanding and awareness about cancer prevention policies, especially among some segments of the population.

Association between perceived risk of COVID-19 and support for transportation policies

The association between perceived risk of COVID-19 at the individual level and support for transportation policies designed to mitigate coronavirus transmission has received little attention. We surveyed a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults (N = 2,011) in June 2020 to examine how support for public policy varied according to perceived risk. We used logistic regression models to control for demographic factors and identify the effect of perceived risk, defined as a combination of self-reported perceptions of personal risk of acquiring the disease and the severity of the illness if infected, on support for a range of policies related to transportation. We found that perceived risk did not vary significantly by sex, race, urbanicity, income, or age. Support for policies aimed at mitigating COVID-19 transmission was consistently higher among those with higher perceived risk of the disease.