Effects of environmental policy on consumption: lessons from the Chinese plastic bag regulation
To reduce plastic bag litter, China introduced a nationwide regulation requiring all retailers to charge for plastic shopping bags on 1 June 2008. By using the policy implementation as a natural experiment and collecting individual-level data before and after the implementation, we investigate the impacts of the regulation on consumers’ bag use. We find that the regulation implementation caused a 49 per cent reduction in the use of new bags. Besides regulation enforcement, consumers’ attitude toward the regulation and some consumers’ socioeconomic characteristics also affected bag consumption. However, the regulation effects differ largely among consumer groups and among regions and shopping occasions.
Year of publication: |
2012
|
---|---|
Authors: | He, Haoran |
Published in: |
Environment and Development Economics. - Cambridge University Press. - Vol. 17.2012, 04, p. 407-431
|
Publisher: |
Cambridge University Press |
Description of contents: | Abstract [journals.cambridge.org] |
Saved in:
Saved in favorites
Similar items by person
-
Household Decision Making in Rural China: Using Experiments to Estimate the Influences of Spouses
Carlsson, Fredrik, (2010)
-
Group Decision Making Under Risk: An Experiment with Student Couples
He, Haoran, (2011)
-
Are Teams Less Inequality Averse than Individuals?
He, Haoran, (2014)
- More ...