Developing growth strategies that promote greener lifestyles requires a good understanding of what factors affect people’s behaviour towards the environment. Recent OECD work based on periodic surveys of more than 10, 000 households across a number of countries and areas represents a breakthrough by providing a common framework to collect unique empirical evidence for better policy design.
This publication presents responses from the most recent round of the OECD survey implemented in 2011 in 5 areas (energy, food, transport, waste and water) and 11 countries: Australia, Canada, Chile, France, Israel, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
Analysis comparing the data across countries, policy conditions and households’ characteristics reveals which measures most effectively change behaviour. Each round of the survey also allows to track changes over time and to explore new emerging issues.
The new survey confirms the importance of providing the right economic incentives for influencing our decisions. The findings indicate that "soft" measures such as labelling and public information campaigns also have a significant complementary role to play. Spurring desirable behaviour change requires a mix of these instruments.
This edition completely replaces the edition that was previously posted in 2011.
This 2011 review of Israel's environmental conditions and policies evaluates progress in sustainable development, improving natural resource management, integrating environmental and economic policies, and strengthening international co-operation.
Studying the roles of governments in adopting green innovations is significant for analysing the transition to a more sustainable energy system. This article presents a comparative study of policies for popularizing domestic solar water heaters in three countries: China, Israel and Australia.
The world economic and social survey (WESS) provides analysis of pressing long-term social and economic development issues and discusses the positive and negative impact of corresponding policies.
The paper "Sanitation and Externalities: Evidence from Early Childhood Health in Rural India" estimates two sources of benefits related to sanitation infrastructure access on early childhood health: a direct benefit a household receives when moving from open to fixed-point defecation or from unim