Public Support for Sustainable Development Goals: Which Policy Instruments and Policy Outcomes Attract Citizen Support? A conjoint experiment in Malaysia

In the pursuit of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) societies and policy makers are confronted with trade-offs between goals, both perceived and actual. It has often been argued that the pursuit of environmental and social goals comes at the expense of economic goals and also that it is important to engage with citizens to understand how they conceptualize these potential trade-offs. Trade-offs may be related to sustainable development outcomes or to policy instruments. To this end we fielded an online survey experiment in Malaysia administered by Qualtics (n = 1,045) with quotas for gender, age, and income in 2022. We use conjoint analysis as a tool for understanding Malaysian citizens’ preferences about policy instruments to achieve sustainable development goals. We use this tool to test a number of hypotheses about how the costs of policy instruments and their characteristics will lead to particular patterns of policy support. In a second step we undertake an exploratory analysis by employing conjoint analysis in order to understand Malaysian citizens’ preferences over trade-offs in sustainable development outcomes. We also estimate public support for sustainable development outcomes.