IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fae/wpaper/2016.13.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Willingness to pay for environmental quality and social capital influence in Sweden

Author

Listed:
  • George Marbuah

    (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences)

Abstract

The growing recognition of social capital as an important parameter necessary for shaping pro-environmental behaviour and attitudes is well established in the literature and continues to engage the attention of policymakers, academics and citizens in many jurisdictions. In this paper, we contribute to this strand of literature by investigating the extent to which various elements of social capital influences Swedish public’s tendency to contribute financially or through lifestyle changes in order to protect the environment. Using data from the latest wave of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) on the environment in 2010, we explore empirically the link between individuals’ willingness to pay (WTP) and social capital influence using an ordered logistic model. The results show, that, individuals in Sweden are fairly willing to pay for the environment and that this decision is principally and significantly influenced by elements of social capital. In particular, we find quite robust results to show that social and institutional trust, environmental group membership among related civic participation activities and adherence to environmental norms significantly impacts the probability of individuals’ decision to sacrifice toward environmental sustainability by paying higher environmental taxes, prices or through standard of living adjustments.

Suggested Citation

  • George Marbuah, 2016. "Willingness to pay for environmental quality and social capital influence in Sweden," Working Papers 2016.13, FAERE - French Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.
    • Handle: RePEc:fae:wpaper:2016.13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://faere.fr/pub/WorkingPapers/Marbuah_FAERE_WP2016.13.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2016
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kataria, Mitesh, 2009. "Willingness to pay for environmental improvements in hydropower regulated rivers," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 69-76, January.
    2. Halkos, George E. & Jones, Nikoleta, 2012. "Modeling the effect of social factors on improving biodiversity protection," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 90-99.
    3. Andrea Kollmann & Johannes Reichl & Friedrich Schneider, 2012. "Who is Willing to Pay for the Environment in the EU - An Empirical Analysis," EuroEconomica, Danubius University of Galati, issue 5(31), pages 15-27, December.
    4. Pretty, Jules & Ward, Hugh, 2001. "Social Capital and the Environment," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 209-227, February.
    5. Yogo, Urbain Thierry, 2015. "Trust and the willingness to contribute to environmental goods in selected African countries," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(5), pages 650-672, October.
    6. Jones, Nikoleta & Sophoulis, Costas M. & Malesios, Chrisovaladis, 2008. "Economic valuation of coastal water quality and protest responses: A case study in Mitilini, Greece," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 2478-2491, December.
    7. Polyzou, E. & Jones, N. & Evangelinos, K.I. & Halvadakis, C.P., 2011. "Willingness to pay for drinking water quality improvement and the influence of social capital," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 74-80, February.
    8. Torgler, Benno & Garcia-Valinas, Maria A., 2007. "The determinants of individuals' attitudes towards preventing environmental damage," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(2-3), pages 536-552, August.
    9. Owen, Ann L. & Videras, Julio, 2008. "Trust, cooperation, and implementation of sustainability programs: The case of Local Agenda 21," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1-2), pages 259-272, December.
    10. Nikoleta Jones, 2010. "Investigating the influence of social costs and benefits of environmental policies through social capital theory," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 43(3), pages 229-244, September.
    11. Broad, Robin, 1994. "The poor and the environment: Friends or foes?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 22(6), pages 811-822, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bin Zhao & Xin Huangfu, 2023. "The More Training, the More Willingness? A Positive Spillover Effect Analysis of Voluntary Behavior in Environmental Protection," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(13), pages 1-16, June.
    2. Paula Vicente & Catarina Marques & Elizabeth Reis, 2021. "Willingness to Pay for Environmental Quality: The Effects of Pro-Environmental Behavior, Perceived Behavior Control, Environmental Activism, and Educational Level," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(4), pages 21582440211, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. George Marbuah, 2019. "Is willingness to contribute for environmental protection in Sweden affected by social capital?," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 21(3), pages 451-475, July.
    2. Qinyuan Wan & Wencui Du, 2022. "Social Capital, Environmental Knowledge, and Pro-Environmental Behavior," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(3), pages 1-17, January.
    3. George Marbuah & Ing-Marie Gren, 2015. "Carbon Emissions and Social Capital in Sweden," Working Papers 2015.14, FAERE - French Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.
    4. Jesús Peiró-Palomino & Andrés J. Picazo-Tadeo, 2019. "Is Social Capital Green? Cultural Features and Environmental Performance in the European Union," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 72(3), pages 795-822, March.
    5. Halkos, George E. & Jones, Nikoleta, 2012. "Modeling the effect of social factors on improving biodiversity protection," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 90-99.
    6. Marbuah, George & Gren, Ing-Marie & Tirkaso, Wondmagegn Tafesse, 2021. "Social capital, economic development and carbon emissions: Empirical evidence from counties in Sweden," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    7. Polyzou, E. & Jones, N. & Evangelinos, K.I. & Halvadakis, C.P., 2011. "Willingness to pay for drinking water quality improvement and the influence of social capital," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 74-80, February.
    8. Dani Aoun, 2015. "Who pays more to preserve a natural reserve, visitors or locals? A confidence analysis of a contingent valuation application," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 17(4), pages 471-486, October.
    9. García-Valiñas, María A. & Macintyre, Alison & Torgler, Benno, 2012. "Volunteering, pro-environmental attitudes and norms," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 455-467.
    10. Roseta-Palma, Catarina & Ferreira-Lopes, Alexandra & Sequeira, Tiago Neves, 2010. "Externalities in an endogenous growth model with social and natural capital," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 603-612, January.
    11. Ik-Chang Choi & Hyun No Kim & Hio-Jung Shin & John Tenhunen & Trung Thanh Nguyen, 2017. "Economic Valuation of the Aquatic Biodiversity Conservation in South Korea: Correcting for the Endogeneity Bias in Contingent Valuation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(6), pages 1-20, June.
    12. Benno Torgler & María A.García-Valiñas & Alison Macintyre, 2007. "Differences in Preferences Towards the Environment: The Impact of a Gender, Age and Parental Effect," CREMA Working Paper Series 2008-01, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    13. Benno Torgler & María A. García Valiñas & Alison Macintyre, 2008. "Environmental Participation and Environmental Motivation," Working Papers 2008.95, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    14. Vogt, Nora & Bizer, Kilian, 2013. "Lock-in effects in competitive bidding schemes for payments for ecosystem services: Revisiting the fundamental transformation," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 158, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    15. Authelet, Manon & Subervie, Julie & Meyfroidt, Patrick & Asquith, Nigel & Ezzine-de-Blas, Driss, 2021. "Economic, pro-social and pro-environmental factors influencing participation in an incentive-based conservation program in Bolivia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    16. Yanqiang Du & Pingyang Liu & Shipeng Su & Linyi Zhou, 2022. "The Sharing of Costs and Benefits of Rural Environmental Pollution Governance in China: A Qualitative Analysis through Guanxi Networks Perspective," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(11), pages 1-15, May.
    17. Jones, Nikoleta & Clark, Julian R.A. & Malesios, Chrisovaladis, 2015. "Social capital and willingness-to-pay for coastal defences in south-east England," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 74-82.
    18. Halkos, George, 2012. "The use of contingent valuation in assessing marine and coastal ecosystems’ water quality: A review," MPRA Paper 42183, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Halkos, George & Galani, Georgia, 2016. "Assessing willingness to pay for marine and coastal ecosystems: A Case Study in Greece," MPRA Paper 68767, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Yexin Zhou & Hongke Song & Xiaopei Huang & Hao Chen & Wei Wei, 2022. "How Does Social Capital Affect Residents’ Waste-Separation Behavior? Evidence from China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(6), pages 1-21, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Willingness to pay; Social capital; Environmental protection; Ordered logistic regression; Sweden;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A13 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Social Values
    • A14 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Sociology of Economics
    • Q50 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - General
    • Q51 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Valuation of Environmental Effects

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fae:wpaper:2016.13. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Dorothée Charlier (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/faereea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.