Preferences for environmental issues among environmentally-concerned citizens in six countries

Abstract

Implementation of measures to protect and improve the environment requires knowledge about people’s preferences, both to ensure economic means and to gain public support for the measures. Since environmental legislation and protection measures become increasingly cross-national, knowledge of benefit perception among people across countries is important. This study addresses the aggregated preferences of environmentally- concerned individuals in France, USA, Norway, Russia, China and Spain. The aggregated preferences in all groups showed emphasis on pollution issues (rank 1 out of six issues in all six countries). The groups were least concerned with animal rights, which here included the right for top predators like tigers and wolf to roam the wilderness in a way that may cause statistical fatalities (rank 4–6). The group’s concern for pollution decreased with the buying power of the country to which they belonged (r2 =0.967). Also, agreement among the individuals in the groups tended to be less when the buying power was large (r2 =0.940). The study shows that benefits accrued in one country may not have the same weight in another country, in particular if countries have different economic development status. It also suggests that efforts to preserve species diversity may require other types of public motivation than efforts to reduce pollution or to use non-renewable resources.