Disentangling the relationships between conservative economic and social attitudes and support for environmental action

Abstract

ABSTRACT Scholars have debated why people on the right of politics are consistently found to be less likely to support environmental action than those on the left. Some authors argue that this relationship is primarily driven by conservative economic attitudes, while several studies have demonstrated a negative link between conservative social attitudes and environmental attitudes. However, as few studies include both conservative economic and social attitudes, it remains unclear whether both sets of attitudes relate to environmental attitudes independently, or whether one confounds the other. This study uses Bayesian regression analyses of data from the 2017 New Zealand election study, finding that both conservative economic attitudes (free market support, opposition to welfare) and conservative social attitudes (exclusionary attitudes, right-wing authoritarianism) have independent negative relationships with environmental attitudes. These results imply that the link between conservative ideology and environmental attitudes is as much about social attitudes and worldview as about economics.