Abstract
The linkage between political right-wing orientation and climate change denial is extensively studied. However, previous research has almost exclusively focused on the mainstream right, which differs from the far right (radical and extreme) in some important domains. Thus, we investigated correlates of climate change denial among supporters of a radical right-wing party (Sweden Democrats, N = 2216), a mainstream right-wing party (the Conservative Party, Moderaterna, N = 634), and a mainstream center-left party (Social Democrats, N = 548) in Sweden. Across the analyses, distrust of public service media (Swedish Television, SVT), socioeconomic right-wing attitudes, and antifeminist attitudes outperformed the effects of anti-immigration attitudes and political distrust in explaining climate change denial, perhaps because of a lesser distinguishing capability of the latter mentioned variables. For example, virtually all Sweden Democrat supporters oppose immigration. Furthermore, the effects of party support, conservative ideologies, and belief in conspiracies were relatively weak, and vanished or substantially weakened in the full models. Our results suggest that socioeconomic attitudes (characteristic for the mainstream right) and exclusionary sociocultural attitudes and institutional distrust (characteristic for the contemporary European radical right) are important predictors of climate change denial, and more important than party support per se.
Highlights
Despite the extensive scientific evidence supporting human-induced climate change [1], climate change denial still exists and contributes to delaying mitigation efforts [2,3]
Our results suggest that socioeconomic attitudes and exclusionary sociocultural attitudes and institutional distrust are important predictors of climate change denial, and more important than party support per se
Results of a multivariate ANOVA revealed that Sweden Democrat supporters scored highest in the variables, followed by Conservative Party supporters and Social Democrat supporters, with two exceptions: (1) Sweden Democrat supporters scored highest in believing in conspiracies, but Social Democrat and Conservative Party supporters did not differ from each other, and (2) Conservative Party supporters scored highest, and Social Democratic supporters scored lowest, in socioeconomic right-wing attitudes
Summary
Despite the extensive scientific evidence supporting human-induced climate change [1], climate change denial still exists and contributes to delaying mitigation efforts [2,3]. Recent analyses suggest that politicians and voters of far-right (i.e., radical and extreme) parties are inclined to dismiss climate change [7,8,9], but only a few studies have empirically investigated possible explanations for this. We address the research gap by testing if radical right-wing supporters in Sweden are more prone to deny climate change and, if so, what factors could explain this. Our focus is on three main explanations that has been proposed [9] and supported by some empirical research: socioeconomic right-wing attitudes [10], exclusionary sociocultural attitudes [11], and institutional distrust [12]. Variables that index these explanations are intercorrelated [11,13,14] and we will, investigate their unique and combined contributions in explaining climate change denial
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