Decentralisation and the environment: Survey-based and cross-country evidence

Attitudes towards the environment have evolved over the years around the world, in part due to growing awareness among the population of the challenges posed by climate change. The decentralisation of policymaking, administrative and political responsibilities to the subnational levels of administration may also have played a part to the extent that creates room for bottom-up policy experimentation and citizen participation in policy design, including in areas related to the environment, that may influence people’s preferences and attitudes. To shed light on these linkages, this paper provides both individual-level survey-based and aggregate cross-country empirical evidence. Individual-level analysis based on data from the World Values Survey shows that decentralisation contributes to more favourable attitudes to the environment, controlling for personal and household characteristics of respondents, as well as country and cohort effects. Country-level analysis based on national accounts data shows that decentralisation is associated with higher government spending on environment-related programmes, as well as higher collection of environmental taxes in the advanced economies, controlling for conventional public finance covariates.