Antisocial Responses to the “Coal to Gas” Regulation: An Unintended Consequence of a Residential Energy Policy

Policies geared toward environmental and economic improvement could unexpectedly lead to negative consequences in other dimensions. Such cases raise a red flag to economists and policymakers who aim to deliver comprehensive and sensible policy evaluations. This article investigates antisocial behaviors in response to the Clean Winter Heating Policy (CWHP), which seeks to improve outdoor air quality. Our results show that participating villagers are more likely to violate laws to burn agricultural waste and exhibit lower prosociality in incentivized dictator games and public goods games. We further explore treatment heterogeneities and find that two channels are likely to play a part. First, the CWHP was perceived as a negative income shock. Therefore, the villagers would want to reduce their expenditure on straw disposal and behave less generously in the incentivized games. Second, the CWHP could trigger discontent and directly affect social preference. Additional evidence suggests that the antisocial (less prosocial) responses could have been avoided by granting larger upfront subsidies. This paper was accepted by Axel Ockenfels, behavioral economics and decision analysis. Funding: J. Cao gratefully acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72243007 and 72250064] and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China [Grant 2023YFE0112900]. T. X. Liu gratefully acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72222005 and 72342032]. R. Ma gratefully acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72134006 and 72304272]. A. Sun gratefully acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 72373157], Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, and the Research Funds of Renmin University of China [Grant 22XNA003]. The authors are also thankful for the support from the Energy Foundation, China Southern Power Grid Co., Ltd., Research Center for Green Economy and Sustainable Development and Institute for Global Development of Tsinghua University, and the Harvard-China Project on Energy, Economy and Environment. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.01459 .