Nguyen01

Name: Ha Uyen Nguyen

NetID: uhn2

TF: Brynn Sherman

PSYC 110

PAPER #3

POTENTIAL FOR CLIMATE POLICIES BASED ON PSYCHOLOGICAL

APPROACH IN CHINA

With a population of 1.42 billion people (World Population Review, 2019), China has an

undoubtedly enormous impact on the global climate. At the moment, however, most of China’s

environmental footprint on the world has been negative, with it accounting for almost a quarter

of the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions (Global Carbon Atlas, 2017) due to population rise

and recent globalization and industrialization. In response to the devastating impacts of climate

change, the People’s Republic of China has taken on drastic measures on a macro level ever

since entering the Paris Agreement of 2016 (Engels, 2018). However, critics have pointed out

that despite impressive reduction in carbon dioxide emissions in recent years, China still needs to

engage the participation of its citizens and private businesses in order to fight climate change in

the long run (Engels, 2018). In order to achieve this, I believe that China’s policy makers should

consult the insights of behavioral science.

Under its authoritarian regime, China has adopted typical command-and-control

approaches such as excluding polluting enterprises from receiving state bank loans, shutting

down installations, and enacting intentional power cuts to achieve energy reduction targets, etc.
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(Balding, 2017). While these macro changes have shown significant positive results, there is

little effort to engage the common people in the fight against climate change. Despite a

reassuring 94.4% of Chinese people saying that they believe climate change is happening, and

73.7% willing to pay more for renewable energy resources, only 29% of them are confident that

they know a lot about the current efforts to offset climate change damage (Li Jing, 2018). These

contrasting numbers go to show two things: First of all, the public of China is in fact incentivized

to take action against climate change, given their strong and unanimous belief. At the same time,

the public does not fully understand what goes into the process, and thus they are less engaged in

climate change counter efforts than they could be. This general lack of lower-level participation

from individuals and smaller businesses will, in the long run, hamper China’s overall

environmental effort (Engels, 2018). On the contrary, if whole population of China is more

involved on a local level, in addition with China’s current effective macro policies, China might

become the world’s leader in fighting climate change. This has been exemplified by the case of

the US, where despite cuts in the federal climate policy under the Trump Administration, local

and state participation shows decisive potential in changing the climate for the better (Climate

Action Tracker, 2018).

Chinese people show great potential in receiving and taking environmental actions, due

to the fact that they directly experience the effects of climate change everyday. In urban areas,

the air quality is constantly at a hazardous level for human health (Zhan et al, 2018). In the

summer of 2018, China saw much longer-lasting summer heat than usual, with amber high

temperatures warning for 33 consecutive days (Yixiu, 2018). The people’s immediate experience

with climate change enhances their belief in it, because the human brain naturally privileges

experience over analysis (van der Linden et al, 2015). In order to take advantage of this situation,
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China’s policy makers could design campaigns that focus on individual stories which people

could easily relate to, and therefore reinforce their affective recall of climate change. These

campaigns could also be spaced out according to a variable ratio schedule to truly consolidate

people’s awareness of climate change and motivate their respective actions. An enhanced belief

and perception will make people more receptive to new information linking observable events

with climate change.

Secondly, Chinese people are not at all psychologically distanced from the problem of

climate change. In fact, they have directly witnessed changes in the environment within recent

generations, due to China’s exponential growth in carbon emissions since joining WTO in 2001

(BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2018). Therefore, they are more likely to believe in the

imminence of climate change and the urgency of present actions (van der Linden et al, 2015). In

fact, without much influence from official policies, the public has already been much more

engaged in the discussion of climate change, as internet browsing data has shown that the phrase

‘global warming’ has been searched for much more often on Baidu, China’s most popular search

engine (Yixiu, 2018). The policy makers could utilize this chance to further the discussion on the

gravity of climate change and educate the public, expanding their perception and knowledge of

climate change to more than their direct experience. In this way, the public can become highly

responsive to eco-friendly movements, and thus, mobilize more easily towards improvement.

Furthermore, due to high level of industrialization and urbanization in China, almost two-

thirds of Chinese citizens live in urban areas (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2019),

where population density is significantly higher than that in rural areas. The high concentration

of people may also mean that there is high level of social influence, due to the close proximity

and frequencies of encounter. This will help facilitate the spread of environmentally-friendly
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norms of practice throughout the society. In fact, field experiments have demonstrated that when

people are aware of the average energy consumption of their neighbors, they are likely to adjust

their own energy use to conform to the group norm (Nolan et al, 2008). In addition, when the

awareness of climate change impacts becomes a normal topic for social conversation, an

individual’s own risk perception and intention to act is amplified (van der Linden, 2014b).

In general, although China has shown progress towards low-carbon development, it still

lacks local level participation in making a change for the better. However, I believe that China is

in a highly suitable situation to implement climate policies drafted from a psychological

approach, because Chinese people have direct experience with climate change, little

psychological distance with the problem and can be highly responsive to environmentally

friendly social norms. As a single nation with nationwide implementation of policies, China’s

enormous scope of impact on global climate could easily be a greater force for good,

championing the global effort towards a greener Earth.

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