Who is Willing to Pay for the Environment in the EU - An Empirical Analysis

With the ratification of the Kyoto protocol and the installation of the European Emission Trading Scheme, the European Union’s governments showed a basic willingness to commit themselves to environmentally friendly policies. But today, the success of these commitments is questionable: all of the EU-27 countries ratified the Kyoto protocol, but only 16 countries have reduced their CO2 emissions, none of them substantially. In our paper we take a look at the question which individual characteristics determine whether a citizen of the European Union is willing to pay for environmental protection: with voters unwilling to accept a more stringent environment policy, political strategies are probably doomed. We aim to identify which individual characteristics form environmental policy attitudes and use data gathered in the European Value Survey in 2008 to empirically test our findings. Knowing voters’ motivation provides valuable insights into how to establish a more efficient environmental policy.