Perception of Policy-Making Criteria: the Case of Vehicle Emissions Control

In this paper, we analyzed data addressing people’s perceptions of the importance of selection criteria for vehicle-related emissions control policies and measures based on a three-round survey organized during three professional air quality control international conferences in 2006 through 2010. More than 300 participants were solicited to answer a ranking questionnaire. The results from the simple tabulation, figures and a rigorous statistical model revealed the divergence in people’s perceptions of the importance of criteria guiding emissions control policies and selection of measures, and we attribute these differences in opinion to differences in people’s working backgrounds and the economic and political conditions in their countries. Our multinomial logit model estimation pushed our investigation further and provided a more direct illustration of the potential determining role of each of these background factors. The estimations found that economic and political differences among countries seem to result in more divergence of opinion about the importance of the criteria. Furthermore, some criteria, particularly less classical ones such as ability to administer changes and time to reach effectiveness, showed more divergence in people’s opinions than classical criteria, such as cost, effectiveness etc.