Normative and image motivations for transportation policy compliance

Compliance with laws and regulations intended to protect common pool resources in the urban context is essential in tackling problems such as pollution and congestion. A high level of non-compliance necessitates investigation into motivations behind compliance. The long-held instrumental theory emph...

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Main Authors: Gao, Jingkang, Zhao, Jinhua
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Sage Publications 2017
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/109740
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1113-8449
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1929-7583
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author Gao, Jingkang
Zhao, Jinhua
author2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
author_facet Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Gao, Jingkang
Zhao, Jinhua
author_sort Gao, Jingkang
collection MIT
description Compliance with laws and regulations intended to protect common pool resources in the urban context is essential in tackling problems such as pollution and congestion. A high level of non-compliance necessitates investigation into motivations behind compliance. The long-held instrumental theory emphasising the dependence of compliance on tangible deterrence measures fails to adequately explain empirical findings. More recently established compliance models incorporate normative, instrumental and image factors as motivations for compliance. We investigate the importance of normative and image motivations for transportation policy compliance, and the influence of the hukou (China’s household registration) on the composition of motivations. Through a case study of Shanghai’s license auction policy to inhibit car growth, we use a structural equation model and data from a survey (n = 1389) of policy attitudes and compliance behaviour. The results show that both locals and migrants comply because of instrumental motivation. However, for locals, normative and image motivations not only influence compliance but do so to a greater degree than instrumental motivations. This stands in stark contrast with the fact that there was no statistical relationship between normative and image motivations and compliance for migrants. The significant contribution of normative and image motivations to compliance in locals bears positive implications for compliance, but the absence of that in migrants is worrying. If only instrumental motivations matter, then the government is really constrained in how it can go about keeping social order. Compliance obtained strictly through social control indicates an unsustainable state of governance.
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spelling mit-1721.1/1097402022-10-01T16:45:38Z Normative and image motivations for transportation policy compliance Gao, Jingkang Zhao, Jinhua Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning Zhao, Jinhua Gao, Jingkang Zhao, Jinhua Compliance with laws and regulations intended to protect common pool resources in the urban context is essential in tackling problems such as pollution and congestion. A high level of non-compliance necessitates investigation into motivations behind compliance. The long-held instrumental theory emphasising the dependence of compliance on tangible deterrence measures fails to adequately explain empirical findings. More recently established compliance models incorporate normative, instrumental and image factors as motivations for compliance. We investigate the importance of normative and image motivations for transportation policy compliance, and the influence of the hukou (China’s household registration) on the composition of motivations. Through a case study of Shanghai’s license auction policy to inhibit car growth, we use a structural equation model and data from a survey (n = 1389) of policy attitudes and compliance behaviour. The results show that both locals and migrants comply because of instrumental motivation. However, for locals, normative and image motivations not only influence compliance but do so to a greater degree than instrumental motivations. This stands in stark contrast with the fact that there was no statistical relationship between normative and image motivations and compliance for migrants. The significant contribution of normative and image motivations to compliance in locals bears positive implications for compliance, but the absence of that in migrants is worrying. If only instrumental motivations matter, then the government is really constrained in how it can go about keeping social order. Compliance obtained strictly through social control indicates an unsustainable state of governance. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Samuel Tak Lee Real Estate Entrepreneurship Laboratory 2017-06-08T15:09:05Z 2017-06-08T15:09:05Z 2016-09 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0042-0980 1360-063X http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/109740 Gao, J., and J. Zhao. “Normative and Image Motivations for Transportation Policy Compliance.” Urban Studies (2016): n. pag. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1113-8449 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1929-7583 en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0042098016664829 Urban Studies Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Sage Publications Zhao
spellingShingle Gao, Jingkang
Zhao, Jinhua
Normative and image motivations for transportation policy compliance
title Normative and image motivations for transportation policy compliance
title_full Normative and image motivations for transportation policy compliance
title_fullStr Normative and image motivations for transportation policy compliance
title_full_unstemmed Normative and image motivations for transportation policy compliance
title_short Normative and image motivations for transportation policy compliance
title_sort normative and image motivations for transportation policy compliance
url http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/109740
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1113-8449
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1929-7583
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