Consistency and variation in the associations between Refugee and environmental attitudes in European mass publics

Abstract

We investigated the associations between refugee and environmental attitudes among 36876 respondents from 20 countries included in the European Social Survey Round 8 (2016). Three preregistered hypotheses were supported: (H1) there was a positive association between these attitudes across countries (meta-analytical partial correlation = .16), (H2) anti-immigration party voters held more negative environmental attitudes, and (H3) pro-environmental party voters held more positive refugee attitudes. Against our predictions, the linear association between refugee and environmental attitudes was not moderated by political affiliation (H4) or political engagement (H5). Exploratory analyses further showed that these attitudes were more strongly associated among the young, the more educated, and among the most extreme populist right voters.