According to the logic of collective action, mere awareness of the causes of environmental degradation will not motivate rational agents to reduce pollution. Yet some government policies aim to enlist citizens in schemes of voluntary cooperation, drawing on an ethos of collective responsibility. Are such policies doomed to failure? This book provides a novel application of rational choice theory to a large-scale survey of environmental attitudes in the Netherlands. Its main findings are that rational citizens are motivated to cooperate towards a less polluted environment to a large extent, but that their willingness to assume responsibility depends on the social context of the collective action problem they face. This empirical study is an important volume in the development of a more consistent foundation for rational choice theory in policy analysis, which seeks to clarify theoretical issues concerning the role of moral commitment, self-interest and reciprocity in environmental behavior.
1. Environmental pollution as a problem of collective action
2. A Dutch approach: self-regulation as a policy concept
3. The actor's perspective on collective action
4. Preference orderings and measurement
5. Rational choice
6. Consistency of motives and preferences
7. The non-equivalence of the cases
8. Reported behavior
9. Do people accept self-regulation policy?
10. Do people agree with the environmental ethos?
, etc.