Delegation or compliance? How parliamentary trust shapes willingness to pay across environmental contribution mechanisms in Europe

Public willingness to pay for environmental protection is usually measured through composite indices that treat distinct payment mechanisms as interchangeable. This article argues that voluntary contributions, lifestyle sacrifices, higher prices, and taxes embody fundamentally different social relationships between citizens and the state. Using multilevel logistic regression models with data from the ISSP 2020 Environment module and the EVS 2017–2021 wave across 17 European countries, we examine how parliamentary trust shapes willingness to contribute across four mechanisms arrayed along a coercion gradient. Parliamentary trust is positively associated with acceptance across contribution mechanisms, with larger estimated associations for higher prices and taxation within the ISSP. Evidence for regional moderation was more limited than anticipated: rather than crowding out voluntary contributions, parliamentary trust is positively associated with voluntary giving across both Western European and post-socialist Central and Eastern European contexts, a pattern consistent with civic complementarity rather than delegation. These findings suggest that variation across contribution mechanisms appears more pronounced than regional moderation, and that mechanism-specific analysis is essential for understanding how institutional trust structures environmental willingness to pay.