公共环境政策如何影响消费者行为——来自中国限制塑料袋使用政策的自然实验证据

How Public Environmental Policies Affect Consumer Behavior?——Natural Experiment Evidence from Plastic Bag Regulation of China

以减少塑料袋垃圾为目标,我国于2008年6月执行了强制全国所有商品零售商对塑料购物袋收费的政策。本研究以该政策的执行为契机,运用自然实验研究方法,在政策执行前后分别开展大规模调查,以收集个人消费者塑料袋消费行为信息,从而获得独特数据,对这项涉及面极广的公共环境政策对消费者行为的影响进行定量分析。结果表明,塑料袋消费量的减幅在完全执行政策的超市达到近80%,而在未完全执行政策的农贸市场也接近60%,并且政策执行使与塑料袋消费相关的塑料袋使用效率、替代品使用行为等也发生了显著变化。此外,政策执行力度、消费者对政策的态度以及消费者的社会经济特征也显著影响塑料袋消费,而且该政策的影响在不同消费者群体、不同地区及不同类型购物场所存在显著差异。

China introduced a nationwide regulation requiring all retailers to charge for plastic shopping bags on June 1, 2008, with the aim of reducing plastic bag litter. Using the policy implementation as a natural experiment and collecting individual-level data before and after the implementation, the author obtained unique data to investigate the impacts of the broadly implemented regulation on consumers~ bag consumption behavior. The author finds that the regulation implementation achieved a nearly 80% reduction in bag consumption in supermarkets with perfect enforcement and a nearly 60% bag reduction in open markets with imperfect enforcement. It also caused significant changes in behaviors related to bag consumption. Besides regulation enforcement, consumersattitude toward the regulation and consumers＇ socioeconomic characteristics also affected hag consumption. However, the regulation effects varied largely among consumer groups, regions and shopping occasions.