Climate risk perceptions and policy ambition

Abstract

This article investigates the factors which influence national climate change policy ambition, as they are reflected in states' commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in United National Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations. The paper specifically investigates the relationship between policy ambition and public perceptions of the threat posed by climate change employing a 140-country nationally representative dataset of risk perceptions conducted in 2019. The analysis shows that while public opinion does correlate overall with policy ambition across countries, in a sizable minority of countries, public threat perceptions are high while policy ambition is low. In these countries, climate change policy is found to be malign in two senses: first, those policies are not consistent with achieving the global public good of climate change control; and second, in the sense that policies are not aligned with the level of concern of citizens about this issue.