How much have the research results of environmental economics and policy studies influenced environmental policies in Japan? This paper examines the contribution of environmental economics and policy studies to (1) the implementation of economic instruments in environmental policy, (2) the application of policy evaluation methods, and (3) the collaboration between environmental administrators and researchers. There is no doubt that environmental economics and policy studies have contributed to environmental policy in Japan. However, their impact on environmental policy has been limited. The responsibilities of environmental administrators and researchers for this problem are discussed. Finally, this paper proposes that it is necessary to go back to the starting point of the establishment of the Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies and reconsider the relationship between the environment, economy, and policy.

The ‘voluntary commitment’ principle has been proposed as a theory of voluntary cost-bearing in environmental conservation. Up until now, Amartya Sen's ‘commitment’ has been referred to in order to justify this cost-bearing principle. In this article, I delineate the misinterpretation of the ‘commitment’ in previous literature and argue that the concept should be understood as a conceptual device to analyse cost-bearing in practice, instead of a justification to institutionalise cost-bearing, in light of what Sen (1977) meant by the concept. This understanding reveals that analysis through the lens of ‘commitment’ can grasp a possible shift in responsibility toward voluntary cost-bearing, which cannot be perceived in an economic framework assuming monistic preferences. The analysis can thereby provide some insights regarding policy-making.

With climate change impacts apparent in many parts of the world there is a need for changes in the society to adapt to climate change. This paper reviews recent empirical climate-economy studies to identify obstacles to adaptation behavior as well as to debate necessary conditions for correcting inequalities in adaptive capacity. We assess four mechanisms that hinder incentives for adaptation behavior: income inequality, risk perception, subsidies and moral hazard, and trade-offs with the current technologies and structure of production.