Environmental trade protection is being increasingly integrated in regulatory regimes across countries. The resulting regulatory stringency has a critical influence on business competitiveness, their export capacity and positioning in global value chains. Yet there is no clear consensus on how businesses perceive such strict regulations.
Using a mixed methods interdisciplinary approach, this project, which is supported by ESRC and CITP, will investigate how environmental regulations affecting trade aligns with business perceptions on the stringency of those regulations. The researchers will use secondary data on technical barriers to trade for environmental protection and bilateral trade to ascertain regulatory stringency across sectors. They will then conduct discussions with businesses in specific sectors to understand their perceptions on such stringent regulations. The results will identify which sectors in the UK are the most exposed and vulnerable to technical barriers to trade for environmental protection based on their stringency, and the alignment between such stringency and business perception.
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