Suchergebnisse

With increasing downstream carbon emissions, the implementation of a personal carbon trading scheme is urgently required. In order to facilitate the progress, government departments are supposed to adopt a motivating or punitive policy to make guidance for downstream carbon emissions reduction. This study determined and verified the evolutionarily stable strategies (ESSs) of government departments and individuals whose carbon emissions exceeded the initial carbon allowance (CEEICA individuals) by using the evolutionary game and numerical simulation methods, respectively. The findings show that the ESS of government departments is always a punitive policy during the variation of strategies of CEEICA individuals. The ESS of CEEICA individuals is an active plan when the added cost (the difference between emissions reduction cost and trading earning) is less than the carbon tax ; otherwise, it is a passive plan. Furthermore, the rate of convergence can be significantly influenced by the probabilistic distances between initial strategies and the ESSs. On the basis of these findings, this study suggested implementing a &ldquo ; punishment first, motivation-supplemented&rdquo ; policy, and developing a stable operational mechanism for a personal carbon trading market.

The active promotion of carbon abatement to mitigate global climate change and protect the environment and public health has become the international consensus. The carbon capability is a key index for measuring the potential reduction of the carbon emissions by urban residents, and thus encouraging residents to exhibit normal and autonomous low-carbon behavior has become an important issue. In this study, based on grounded theory, data from in-depth interviews were encoded at three levels to identify the multi-layer factors that drive the carbon capability of urban residents, and we constructed a theoretical model for policy intervention. The results showed that individual factors, organizational factors, social factors, and social demographic variables were the main variables that affected the carbon capability, and utility experience perception was the main intermediary variable that affected the carbon capability. There was an obvious gap between utility experience perception and carbon capability. Low carbon selection cost was an internal situational variable that regulated the relationship between these factors, and the policy situation and technical situation were external situational variables. There were two-way effects on the carbon capability and utility experience perception. Thus, we explored these driving factors and the role of the carbon capability model. The results of this study may facilitate targeted policy thinking and the development of an implementation path for government in order to formulate effective guiding policies to enhance the carbon capability of urban residents.

Background: Occupational safety and health issues are closely associated with the wellbeing and survival of every worker and family, as well as of society as a whole. It is a type of typical public issue and requires cooperative governance among different governing subjects. Methods: According to the questionnaire investigation on 2179 subjects with different identities, the research explored the willingness to pay (WTP) for occupational safety and health and the degree of attention, with different identities, through the difference analysis and descriptive statistical analysis. The research studied the relationship between public attention and WTP through the methods of cross-analysis, correlation analysis, and regression analysis. Results: (1) The public show a disregard attitude to occupational safety and health. (2) The public expect the government to fund and solve occupational safety and health problems rather than for themselves to pay directly. (3) Over 50% of questionnaire respondents defined occupational safety and health problems as being classified into two categories, namely, &ldquo ; no attention&mdash ; government payment&rdquo ; or &ldquo ; no attention&mdash ; refusal of individual payment&rdquo ; according to the analysis. (4) The level of attention paid to occupational safety and health can significantly predict the individual income WTP, item WTP, subject WTP, and event WTP. Conclusions: This research aimed to outline the implications for the governance of occupational safety and health.

In the backdrop of growing public concerns about climate change and air pollution, and the contribution of petroleum combustion in the transport sector to these issues, China has introduced a range of policy incentives for promoting the uptake of electric vehicles (EVs). These incentives have resulted in a rapid increase in EV stocks since the early 2010s, and this trend is expected to continue, or even accelerate, in the years to come, which would, in turn, lead to a policy-oriented EV market. The primary objective of the project is to develop an understanding of the effect of various policy incentives on EV uptake based on annual data of 43 cities from 2011 to 2017, and these policies mainly refer to those that focus on EV purchasing, registering, driving, and charging stages. The novelty of this paper is that we focused on policy effect on EV adoption behavior, rather than adoption intention which has widely been analyzed in previous studies. Results showed that the abolishment of purchasing and driving restriction, government subsidies, purchase tax exemption, and dedicated license plates significantly promote EV diffusion, and the effect of the two restrictions are more powerful. Thus, this study suggested that abolishment of purchasing and driving restrictions can be insisted to drive EV market share, meanwhile improving policies that can guide consumers through various motivations are also necessary.

With increasing downstream carbon emissions, the implementation of a personal carbon trading scheme is urgently required. In order to facilitate the progress, government departments are supposed to adopt a motivating or punitive policy to make guidance for downstream carbon emissions reduction. This study determined and verified the evolutionarily stable strategies (ESSs) of government departments and individuals whose carbon emissions exceeded the initial carbon allowance (CEEICA individuals) by using the evolutionary game and numerical simulation methods, respectively. The findings show that the ESS of government departments is always a punitive policy during the variation of strategies of CEEICA individuals. The ESS of CEEICA individuals is an active plan when the added cost (the difference between emissions reduction cost and trading earning) is less than the carbon tax; otherwise, it is a passive plan. Furthermore, the rate of convergence can be significantly influenced by the probabilistic distances between initial strategies and the ESSs. On the basis of these findings, this study suggested implementing a "punishment first, motivation-supplemented" policy, and developing a stable operational mechanism for a personal carbon trading market.

In order to mitigate energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission in the transportation sector, countries around the world have generally adopted electric vehicles (EVs) as a new development direction of the automobile industry. Although the Chinese government has issued a series of incentive policies to promote EVs, the ownership of EVs is still insufficient due to low public purchasing enthusiasm. Thus, to better realize the promotion goal of EVs, public preference for EV incentive policies is worth investigating. Based on a large sample survey (N = 1039), this study investigated public preference for various incentive policies by using the conjoint analysis method. The results suggest that less than one third of consumers have a better understanding of the incentive policies, while more than half of the consumers know little about these policies. For consumers, the relative importance of different policy categories is ranked as follows: charging incentive policies, driving incentive policies, vehicle registering incentive policies, and purchasing incentive policies. As for different socio-demographic groups, consumers aged 26&ndash ; 30 years, with a monthly income higher than RMB 20,000, with high school, special secondary school, and masters (or above) educational levels regarded the relative importance of driving incentive policies as the highest ; consumers from two-member families ranked purchasing incentive policies as the first one ; consumers with a monthly income of RMB 15,001&ndash ; 20,000 and those from three-member families place registering incentive policies first ; other consumers put charging incentive policies first. Based on the above results, this paper offers policy recommendations for improving consumer knowledge level of incentive policies as well as full consideration of their policy demands.