Protecting the environment at home or abroad?
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Date
2024-11
Publication Type
Journal Article
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yes
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Abstract
By importing goods whose production affects the environment abroad, wealthy countries are 'offshoring' a large share of their total environmental footprint of consumption to less affluent societies. We argue that current efforts to mitigate this problem, which focus largely on informational policy instruments for global supply chains, could result in unintended side effects. The reason pertains to a potential tradeoff between a home bias in consumption and the geographic allocation of environmental impacts. We develop a theoretical argument on how consumers may respond when they prefer a domestically produced good but are made aware that this results in more environmental damage at home, compared to importing the same product from abroad. Based on choice experiments in Germany, Japan, and the United States, we observe that information provision can reduce consumer demand for environmentally harmful products, but also find some support for environmental NIMBYism when environmental and provenance information are combined. The key implication of this finding is that policymakers should address potentially unintended side-effects of more stringent informational requirements for global supply chains.
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Publication status
published
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Book title
Journal / series
Volume
19 (11)
Pages / Article No.
114074
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Event
Edition / version
Methods
Software
Geographic location
Date collected
Date created
Subject
environmental information; experiment; home bias; NIMBY; trade; offshoring
Organisational unit
03446 - Bernauer, Thomas / Bernauer, Thomas
Notes
Funding
182235 - Environmental Footprint-Shifting Through International Trade: Driving Forces and Policy Options (SNF)