An Institutional Analysis of Environmental Pollution Disputes in Taiwan: Cases of 'Self-Relief'

During the late 1980s and early 1990s in Taiwan, people's protests against environmental pollution often took the form of "self-relief," meaning that they attempted to fight polluters using their own resources, without relying on legal or administrative procedures. Why did such an extreme form of disputes become so widespread? What institutional changes did these movements bring about? These questions are analyzed using the analytical framework of "law and economics." Our research shows that "self-relief" functioned to a certain extent as a means of realizing quick compensation for victims, and for reflecting the opinions of local people concerning development projects; in addition, it served to promote the formulation of law and administrative systems. However, as it was based on direct negotiations between the parties concerned, the outcome of each dispute only reflected the transient balance of forces, and the experience gained in negotiations was not accumulated as a social norm.

Environmental consciousness, economic gain and consumer choice of energy efficient appliances in Thailand, China and India

In developing economies, consumption of electricity in residential and commercial sectors increased with economic development. In order to identify the factors for effective facilitation of standard and labeling programs, this article explores factors that affect consumer choice to energy-efficient products. Main findings are as follows: (1)Consumers in Thailand shows the highest awareness to environmental friendly concepts, followed by India and China.(2) Chosen labeled products include air-conditioners, TVs, refrigerators and washing machines, but not some popular products such as ceiling fans, electric fans or mobile phones. (3) Consumer who has higher energy conservation perception will buy energy efficient products.(4) Consumers in China, India and Thailand are sensitive to energy efficiency of products, primarily because they lead to less expenditure on electricity. (5) Labeling works to make levels of the energy efficiency of products more visible and thus helped consumers to choose the products.

Energy efficiency standard and labeling program and consumer welfare : a case of the air conditioner market in China

Improving energy efficiency is an unarguable emergent issue in developing economies and an energy efficiency standard and labeling program is an ideal mechanism to achieve this target. However, there is concern regarding whether the consumers will choose the highly energy efficient appliances because of its high price in consequence of the high cost. This paper estimates how the consumer responds to introduction of the energy efficiency standard and labeling program in China. To quantify evaluation by consumers, we estimated their consumer surplus and the benefits of products based on the estimated parameters of demand function. We found the following points. First, evaluation of energy efficiency labeling by the consumer is not monotonically correlated with the number of grades. The highest efficiency label (Label 1) is not evaluated to be no less higher than labels 2 and 3, and is sometimes lower than the least energy efficient label (Label UI). This goes against the design of policy intervention. Second, several governmental policies affects in mixed directions: the subsidies for energy saving policies to the highest degree of the labels contribute to expanding consumer welfare as the program was designed. However, the replacement for new appliances policies decreased the welfare.