Laypeople Have Difficulty Processing Efficiency When Assessing Environmental Policies

When evaluating policies, what should mostly matter is how successful public policies are at satisfying citizens' policy preferences (e.g., reducing carbon emissions), relative to the policies’ cost. Yet, across 6 studies (N = 2759), we found that participants’ judgments tended to be quite insensitive to policy efficiency. French citizens regarded an environmental policy driven by an altruistic intention that turned out to be inefficient as being more commendable than a policy motivated by selfishness that dramatically reduced carbon emissions (Experiments 1a-d, N = 854). Similarly, an altruistic but low efficiency policy was supported more than a selfish but high efficiency policy (Experiment 2, N = 1105). Independent manipulation of intent and efficiency (Experiment 2) suggested that assessments of policies are characterized by low sensitivity to large differences in efficiency expressed numerically, and relatively high sensitivity to actors’ intentions. The more citizens were morally committed to tackle a policy issue (e.g., reducing emissions), the more they voiced support for any policy decision addressing the issue, regardless of its efficiency (Experiment 2). Encouragingly, Experiment 3 (N = 800) found that introducing subtle qualitative appraisals of an environmental policy’s impact and financial cost can nudge participants towards greater attention to its efficiency. Overall, our paper highlights the importance of using contextual and qualitative (vs. numeric) appraisals of environmental policies in political communication to make citizens more focused on their efficiency.