Sustainability Factor-a proposal of public policy for environmental, economic, fiscal, and marketing regulation, with a focus on human behavior, for environmental issues

This article aims to open a discussion around an alternative public policy to that were exclusive recommended by International Monetary Fund (IMF) reducing causes of climate change. The public policy prescribed by the IMF attacks only one aspect of the environmental bias of sustainability, based on higher oil prices, withdrawing its subsidies, or leveling higher taxation, revealing an approach that is difficult to implement in countries, because it is regressive, inflationary, and harmful to national industry. The public policy proposed here, within a normative analytical approach, and based on a literature review, aims at creating a Sustainability Factor (SF), which would address the sustainability issue, in its social, environmental, economic, and social biases, using behaviorism as background theory. Thus, companies and people with more sustainable attitudes would pay less taxes, and vice versa, by applying the FS index, which would vary in a symmetric range of values, with value 1 as the center, on existing taxes. The model would also foresee ways to encourage people and companies to acquire inputs, products, and labor, preferably from other more sustainable companies and people, with potential market advantages for all. In theory, it would be less regressive approach, less concentration of wealth, less inflationary and more favorable to the national industry, neutral from the fiscal point of view, and easily approved by the legislative houses, due to the mediate and immediate positive reinforcers to all social actors, which would lead, in theory, to greater adherence to public policy, making it perennial. At the end, topics for future research are proposed.