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What drives resident acceptance of personal carbon trading policy in China?

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Abstract

Personal carbon trading (PCT) policy has been considered as an innovative and radical environmental policy tool to achieve carbon neutrality in private sector. For a new policy tool, resident acceptance is extremely vital and should be considered first and put in a vital position. The aim of this research is to understand resident acceptance of PCT policy and examine what drives resident acceptance and opposition of PCT policy. Based on a national survey in China, this research analyzed the level of resident acceptance toward PCT policy and its associated driving factors. Results delineated that residents are more likely to accept the piloting of PCT policy in other city and more positive toward the implementation of PCT policy in the next five years, but less likely to accept the piloting of PCT policy in their city and more negative toward the immediate implementation of PCT policy across the country. Furthermore, this research uncovered that residents from different regions and living areas and with different income level have different acceptable level to PCT policy. Additionally, this research found that resident acceptance of PCT policy is significantly affected by PCT knowledge, perceived benefit, perceived cost, perceived policy effectiveness and environmental awareness. However, compared with other factors, environmental awareness plays a limited role in improving resident acceptance of PCT policy. On the basis of research findings, measures to improve resident acceptance of PCT policy were discussed.

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Availability of data and material

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number 71974177, 71804174 and 72104034), USTC Research Funds of the Double First-Class Initiative (Grant Number YD2160002002), Humanities and Social Science Fund of Ministry of Education of China (21YJC630037) and Science and Technology Planning Project of Shaanxi Province, China (2020JQ-398, 2020JQ-006).

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number 71974177, 71804174 and 72104034), USTC Research Funds of the Double First-Class Initiative (Grant Number YD2160002002), Humanities and Social Science Fund of Ministry of Education of China (21YJC630037) and Science and Technology Planning Project of Shaanxi Province, China (2020JQ-398, 2020JQ-006).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, Anhui Province, People’s Republic of China

    Lan Gao & Shanyong Wang

  2. School of Economics and Management, Chang’An University, Xi’an, 710064, Shaanxi Province, People’s Republic of China

    Haonan He

  3. School of Economics, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, 230009, Anhui Province, People’s Republic of China

    Jun Li

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  1. Lan Gao
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LG: Writing-original draft, HH: Conceptualization and Formal analysis, SW: Methodology, Writing- review & editing, JL: Conceptualization, Data curation and Supervision.

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Correspondence to Haonan He.

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Gao, L., He, H., Wang, S. et al. What drives resident acceptance of personal carbon trading policy in China?. Environ Geochem Health 44, 3007–3020 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-021-01172-x

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