The impact of policy awareness: Evidence from vehicle choices response to fiscal incentives
研究发现消费者对节能车财政激励的认知有限，通过随机实验提供信息能显著提高政策意识，促使消费者购买更省油的车辆，表明认知不足是公共政策有效性的关键障碍。
Isolating the role of limited knowledge, psychological frictions and policy characteristics is key when evaluating a public program and designing future policies. We document limited awareness about the presence of fiscal incentives towards fuel efficient vehicles. Exploiting a direct measure of awareness at the individual level, we find vehicle choices response heterogeneity to these fiscal incentives between aware and unaware individuals. To estimate the effect of awareness, we leverage a field experiment randomizing information about the mere existence of the fiscal incentives. We show the simple intervention substantially increases policy awareness among vehicle buyers and affects consumers’ vehicle choices. Further, we find increased awareness induces consumers to purchase vehicles that consume less fuel. Together, our findings highlight that limited awareness represents a critical barrier to the effectiveness of public programs.