I'm looking for research on factors that influence the public acceptability / acceptance / support and the political feasibility of regulatory ("command & control") policy instruments mainly addressing / affecting consumers (not producers) - mainly in the field of environmental policy, i.e. instruments regulating consumption choices and behaviour regarding, e.g. energy use, mobility, food, waste; but also related fields from which lessons might be drawn (e.g. anti-smoking policies).
I would like to know more on the importance of different influencing factors such as problem characteristics, distributional issues, actor constellations, discourses & narratives, windows of opportunity, or policy design issues (e.g. tightening rules over time, accompanying measures...).
I'm aware of the general (mostly political science) literature on policy processes, actors, power, etc., of literature dealing with instrument choice and pros & cons of different policy instrument types, and of literature dealing with acceptance of environmental policy in general and of eco/CO2-taxes in particular...
... but it looks as there is hardly any literature that systematically compares public acceptability and political feasibility - and the role of different influencing factors on them - for different policy instrument types in comparison (apart from the simple distinction between hard and soft/voluntary instruments) and for "command & control instruments" in particular !!??
I'm looking forward to your comments and suggestions!
Best regards,
Dirk Heyen
I am exactly working on this, if I find somethingI'll let you know.
annette
Dear Dirk Arne Heyen, you can easily find it from google scholar. Just type your topic in it you will find many papers:
https://scholar.google.com/
Abdul Rehman : Of course, I have searched on Google Scholar but I haven't found much which really fits to my interest on influencing factors explaining why consumer-related command-and-control instruments are more or less accepted / have been political feasible or not in different cases! As already written above, I know there is much literature on public support of environmental/climate policy in general, on acceptability and feasibility of different instrument types compared to oneanother, and also specifically on CO2/eco taxes - but this is not exactely what I'm looking for! I'm looking for differences within the realm of consumer-related C&C instruments!
Have you tried directly to find it from the top journals databases? I hope you will find the relevant literature from Springer, Elsevier, Sage, MDPI, Emerald, Taylor and Francis, etc.
Dirk Arne Heyen, I have gone through your stated illustrations. In my point of view, based on your topic, it would be better not to limit your search based on "consumer perspective". If it would be only about policy acceptability then you could focus on the only stakeholder (i.e., consumers). But in your case, you also wish to identify the factors affecting feasibility of regulatory environmental policies, which involves another stakeholder (i.e., the governmental setup). The feasibility might depend on several non-consumer factors, including institutional factors, political factors, and producer-related factors. Therefore, I alternatively suggest you to narrow down your topic or problem statement. And then, target the literature accordingly. I suggest the following steps: a) first narrow down your problem statement, b) next, try to find the most related single article, c) read that single article and go to the bibliography of the same article, d) find the related articles from its bibliography, download them, and read them. I think it will facilitate your search for related literature.
One more thing I would like to suggest is that, at one time, you should stick to policy instruments related to one dimension, such as food, energy, mobility, waste treatment, etc. In this way, you will be able to get good command over them, enabling yourself produce good research works.
Good Luck!
Thank you for your suggestions so far - but let me be clear: I'm NOT looking for general advice on how to approach a research question or alike. I'm a senior researcher and project leader myself and, of course, I'm familiar with the steps you suggested, and I have found and read through literature that is linked to my question above - but it is just "linked" and does not answer it (this is also why we just started a research project on it including case studies). Asking this question here on RG is just a way to "double-check" my results from database searches and to might get additional suggestions from the community for specific strands or pieces of literature which I might have overlooked so far!
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