Public support for global warming policies: solution framing matters

Abstract

One of the biggest challenges to sustainability is lack of public support for policies needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Across three studies, we explored how solution framing impacts public support for financially costly policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Study 1 analyzed data from a statewide public opinion poll (N = 771), while studies 2 (N = 100) and 3 (N = 163) were laboratory-based experiments. Specifically, we found that polling questions that asked about a financially costly climate change policy received more support when the goal of the policy was to create efficient technologies than when the goal was to curtail behavior. In addition, we replicate previous research showing that there is a partisan gap for beliefs about global warming and extend this research to show that the partisan gap is not found when looking at support for solutions. The implications of these results for promoting needed climate change policies is discussed.