Experience with extreme weather events increases willingness-to-pay for climate mitigation policy

Abstract

We explore how extreme event experience relates to climate policy support in the U.S. We add three important yet uncommon elements to this field: we verify self-reports of extreme event experience with actual weather data; we use a willingness-to-pay measure to assess behavioral intention; and we analyze which types of extreme events have stronger impacts on WTP. People who self-report extreme weather events are willing to pay approximately $112/year more for climate mitigation policy than those who do not; people for whom those self-reports match recorded data are willing to pay $106 or $71 more (controlling for climate beliefs and political ideology and depending on how unverified reporters are treated). Wildfires have the strongest influence on WTP. Though our results show that political ideology correlates more strongly with policy support than does extreme event experience, extreme event experience exhibits a robust correlation with policy support, and could result in a minimum of billions of dollars of support annually for clean-energy policy alone.