Lois Player

Who, Why, for How Long? Understanding Public Support for Low Emission Zones in the UK

Lois's PhD aims to understand which groups of individuals may face barriers to accepting environmental transport policies, the reasons for this, and suggest how support may be increased.

Climate change poses an urgent threat to ecosystems, human health and safety, placing it at the top of political agendas across the globe (Biesbroek et al., 2022). Despite international treaties such as the Paris Agreement (2015) seeking to limit global warming, temperatures are projected to surpass the current 1.5°C target within the next few decades if no further action is taken (IPCC, 2022), and air pollution remains a leading environmental health risk, causing ~6.5 million premature deaths per year (European Environment Agency, 2018). It is widely agreed that to mitigate the effects of climate change and air pollution, profound behaviour change is required (Whitmarsh et al., 2021). This behavioural change is often narrowly conceptualised as an individual-level consumer activity, for example recycling or taking the bus. For effective mitigation however, people must also engage in collective actions. Environmental policies are a key way of incentivising transformational collective action. For policies to be successful however, they must be accepted by the public (Steg et al., 2006). Indeed, much research has demonstrated that public resistance creates reluctance amongst politicians to implement ambitious environmental policies, which often results in the termination or re-design of proposed policies (Steg et al., 2005), or withdrawal of existing policies (Fairbrother, 2022). Such terminated plans are costly and not conductive to effective climate change mitigation, making it a priority to understand why certain people may accept or reject a future policy.

Objectives:

Study 1: To understand which predictors are most important in determining the acceptability of a Low Emission Zone, in the general population

Study 2: To understand the reasons for lack of acceptance of Low Emission Zones in the general population, and across particularly low-acceptance groups (identified in [1])

Study 3: To understand if acceptability levels, and reasons for lack of acceptance, are consistent after Low Emission Zone implementation (from [2])

Study 4: To develop a measure of environmental knowledge, suitable for controlling for this covariate in Study 4

Study 5: To understand the predictors of acceptability of a Low Traffic Neighbourhood in general population and minority groups

Study 6: To design an intervention, based on studies 1, 2, 3, and 5, that facilitates the acceptance of climate transport polices

Potential Applications and Impacts:

This research will directly inform the implementation of climate policy at local, nationwide and international levels. Specifically, the outlined theoretical work will inform the types of people who may face barriers in accepting environmental transport policies, as well as the reasons why. Once understood, these challenges can be addressed to facilitate the successful introduction of policies such as Low Emission Zones (also known as Clean Air Zones) and Liveable Neighbourhoods. Methodologically, this PhD will determine if large, readily-available datasets are suitable to understand the support of policies, to enable the efficient and cost-efficient analysis of large sets of public opinion data. Conceptually, it will be understood how we can not only predict, but also encourage acceptance. Drawing upon the student’s awarded public engagement grant, existing links to local councillors, and community connections, this work will be disseminated to various stakeholders.

Relevance to the Research Council

The current project is in line with the ESRPC’s mission to deliver research with genuine economic and societal impact, on a local and globally level. In particular, exploring policy support in both general and minority populations contributes to the ESRPC’s goal of delivering social prosperity, by giving under-researched populations the support they require to engage with climate policy. In this way, the current work also promotes the ESPRC’s diversity and inclusion goals.