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Policy Sciences

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01-09-2014

Experimentation in policy design: insights from the building sector

Author: Jeroen van der Heijden

Published in: Policy Sciences | Issue 3/2014

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Abstract

The current article questions how experimentation in policy design plays out in practice. In particular, it is interested in understanding how the content and process of policy-design experiments affect their outcomes. The article does so by building on an original study into 31 real-world examples of experimentation in policy design in the building sector in Australia, the Netherlands, and the United States. All examples aim to improve the environmental sustainability of the building sector. The article finds that these 31 examples have attracted moderate to substantial numbers of participants (policy outcome HO.i), but have not achieved substantial numbers of buildings built or retrofitted with high levels of sustainability (policy outcome HO.ii). By carefully unpacking these policy designs into a number of key characteristics, it finds that this mismatch between the two outcomes may partly be explained by flawed policy-design processes. The article concludes with the main lessons learnt and provides some suggestions on how to improve experimentation in policy design.

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The relatively small size of the Netherlands is promising in attracting participants from various backgrounds and from all over the country to a mini-symposium.

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For the fsQCA analysis, these scores were translated as: “++” equals “1;” “+” equals “0.66;” “−”equals “0.33;” and “−−”equals “0” (cf. Ragin et al. 2006).

In line with the custom of qualitative social science, research interviewees provided me with their insights in confidence. As such, the identities of the interviewees (nor the cases studied) cannot be provided. To give the reader insight into the variance of the interviews, voice is given to them by referring to individual interviewees with a number (e.g., “int50”). Please note that some interviewees are referred to with numbers higher than 99 (the number of interviews used for this article). Please note that this article reports on a study that sits in a larger study, which addresses over 50 cases based on over 200 interviews—brief descriptions of all the cases in this larger study can be obtained from www.EnviroVoluntarism.info.

Even more, in many of the cases studied, interviewees were not aware of the other cases included in this study—even those that were implemented in, for instance, the same city.

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Title: Experimentation in policy design: insights from the building sector
Author: Jeroen van der Heijden
Publication date: 01-09-2014
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Policy Sciences / Issue 3/2014
Print ISSN: 0032-2687
Electronic ISSN: 1573-0891
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-013-9184-z

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Policy and regulatory design for developing countries: a mechanism design and transaction cost approach

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On evaluating success in complex policy mixes: the case of renewable energy support schemes

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