Environmental Consciousness in Local Sustainable Development: A Case Study of the Anti-Idling Policy in Taiwan

To address the increasing impact of global warming, Taiwan has devised a variety of activities to promote energy savings and carbon reduction. Although the city of Tainan was the first in Asia to enforce an anti-idling policy, the intersection between public value creation and local sustainable development has not yet been analyzed. Hence, this article explores the anti-idling policy in Tainan through the lens of social judgment theory (SJT). It also considers criteria related to the core values of environmental, economic, and social sustainability to understand the public values held by stakeholders in Tainan. The results of this article illustrate and dismantle the differences between several groups' understanding of public value as it relates to local sustainable development, and suggest the establishment of intersectoral collaboration and community participation regarding value perception. Although the case is specific to Taiwan, its characteristics are typical of local sustainable development globally, especially in Asia.