Public Support For Climate Policies Research Articles

Understanding public acceptability of climate policies in Europe

ABSTRACT Urgent and decisive government action to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions is more likely when the proposed measures are popular among the public. This paper compares the drivers of European public support for three alternative policies to combat climate change: carbon taxation, renewable energy subsidies, and minimum energy efficiency standards that apply to household appliances. We combine survey data with regional socio-economic and environmental indicators to provide a comprehensive, comparative analysis of policy acceptance that accounts for the geographic context in which these policies would be implemented. By comparing the drivers among three climate policies, we identify a rural-urban gap in predicting public perception of carbon taxation, which does not exist in the other policies. We also found a positive relationship between regional exposure to fine particular matter (PM2.5) and public support for climate policy, providing novel insights into the influence of environmental factors on public perceptions. This research highlights the importance of environmental and socio-economic context in predicting climate policy acceptance and offers valuable implications for policymakers seeking to garner public support for effective climate change mitigation strategies.

Rightwing populist attitudes and public support for climate policies in Western Europe: Widening the scope using the European Social Survey

Rightwing populist attitudes and public support for climate policies in Western Europe: Widening the scope using the European Social Survey

Political trust and public support for climate policy in Europe: the role of perceptions about politicians’ competence and integrity

While previous studies on the relationship between political trust and support for climate policy have focused on the evaluative component of trust, namely whether politicians and the political system can be trusted or not, less is known about the role of different dimensions of trustworthiness that underlie such evaluations. In this study, we examine how perceptions about politicians’ competence and integrity, two central dimensions of trustworthiness, are related to public support for climate policies. Using survey data from four European countries (Sweden, Germany, Spain, and Poland), we find that people who think that politicians are competent are generally more likely to support climate policy. In contrast, we do not find such a relationship between integrity perceptions (e.g., corruption) and policy attitudes. These findings are consistent across national contexts and hold even when alternating the measures capturing competence and integrity perceptions. To bolster public support for climate policies, climate communication should prioritize addressing public concerns regarding politicians’ competence in designing sound climate policies, rather than alleviating concerns about their integrity, such as fears of corruption.

Science-Consistent Climate Health Beliefs As Predictors of Climate Behaviors and Support for Inflation Reduction Act Provisions and a Carbon Emissions Tax

Understanding the factors associated with acceptance of climate action is central in designing effective climate change communication strategies. An exploratory factor analysis of 12 science-consistent beliefs about the existence, causes, and consequences of climate change reveals three underlying factors: climate change [a] is real and human caused, [b] has increased the frequency of extreme weather events, and [c] negatively affects public health. In the presence of demographic, ideological, and party controls, this health factor significantly predicts a 3–6 percentage point increase in respondents’ [a] willingness to advocate for climate change; [b] reported personal pro-climate behaviors; and [c] support for government policies addressing climate change. These results are robust when controlling for respondents’ underlying belief in the existence and causes of climate change, respondent worry, self-efficacy, and respondent belief that extreme weather events and heat waves are increasing. These findings suggest ways to bolster public support for climate policies that may otherwise be at risk.

Klimageld: wichtig, aber kein Allheilmittel

Abstract With the rise in the carbon price since the beginning of the year, the carbon dividend is once again a hot topic. Hopes are high that an imminent carbon dividend will ensure social equity and create more public support for climate policy. But are these expectations realistic or is this instrument and its effects exaggerated? This article calls for some expectation management when it comes to the carbon dividend, because as important as it is, socially just climate protection is much more than just mitigating rising carbon prices.

Examining the effects of gasoline prices on public support for climate policies

Examining the effects of gasoline prices on public support for climate policies

Policy sequencing can increase public support for ambitious climate policy

Abstract Public support for ambitious climate policies and carbon prices that have direct costs for voters may depend on policy sequencing. Policy sequencing theory suggests that the strategic ordering of policies into sequences that initially create benefits can subsequently increase support for higher carbon prices. However, systematic quantitative evidence about the effects of sequencing on public support is lacking. We provide novel theoretical and empirical insights on the mechanisms through which strategic policy sequencing affects public support for climate policies. We generated these insights using geospatial data and a representative conjoint experiment with Swiss voters conducted just before the popular vote on an amendment to the Federal Act on the Reduction of Greenhouse Gas Emissions in June 2021. Our evidence shows that the perceived effectiveness of prior policy-induced benefits is related to more public support for higher carbon prices across sectors. Moreover, we find that more opportunity structures for low-emission alternatives—like higher EV charging station density—are associated with increased public support for carbon prices in the sector where the former material benefits occur. Our results also imply that positive policy perceptions of prior climate policies are related to increased support, particularly among conservative voters and those who do not regard climate change as a salient issue. Thus, strategic policy sequencing could be an effective strategy for broadening public support for ambitious climate policies.

Public support for decarbonization policies in the UK: exploring regional variations and policy instruments

ABSTRACT Decarbonization policies require public support to be implemented and to remain in legislation. Examinations of public support for climate policies tend to focus on a small number of policy instruments and/or use hypothetical instead of real policy proposals. Here, we address these criticisms by examining public support across four distinct policy instruments – command-and-control, market-based, information-based, and voluntary – using sixteen policy proposals by UK political parties and government institutions. In addition to assessing UK national policy support, we also explore regional differences. Using a representative sample of the UK population (N = 1,911), we find that, at a national level, individuals preferred instruments shown to be less effective in reaching net-zero: information-based and voluntary policies. Our results indicate that the extent to which individuals believe in the free market, their environmental worldviews and political party support as well as their age are all correlated with policy support. We find stark regional differences where, compared to individuals living in Greater London, those living in the remainder of the country were 32% and 30% less likely to support command-and-control and market-based policies, respectively (among other regional differences). Regional variations in free-market beliefs and population density partly explain differences in policy support. We propose policymakers focus on place-based initiatives to increase support for decarbonization policies that are more effective in reaching net-zero and on improving the perception of market-based and command-and-control policies through positive framing and policy bundles.

Climate change and anthropogenic pressure on Bintan Islands, Indonesia: An assessment of the policies proposed by local authorities

Bintan island is one of Indonesia’s national priority regencies of climate resilience for the marine and coastal sectors. This area also has had the highest frequency of disaster events within the province over the past ten years, where climate-related hazard was dominant. Therefore, it is necessary to receive public support for climate policies within the region. From this point of view, this paper aims to explore the local evidence of climate change, anthropogenic pressure which worsens climate hazards, and the linkage with local policies. The primary data source was a climate data set of observations from 1976–2021, land use change information from 1990–2020, historical climate-related hazards, and related current policy documents. We found that the region’s air temperature has continuously increased over 45 years with the positive standardized precipitation index (SPI) being dominant. Meanwhile the wind speed was tended to decrease since 2015 with the highest extreme record occurred in February 2021. Moreover, climate-related threats occurred more than 70 times in Bintan from 2011 to 2021 where forest fire and flood were tended to worsen. Another anthropogenic source, such as land use change, also puts significant pressure on the part where the open land has increased by 187%, and vegetation area has decreased by 51.1%. This condition creates these small islands vulnerable to climate change, especially climate-related hazards. However, in the regional development plan document 2021–2026, climate change adaptation is not one of the local priority issues, but their concern about disaster mitigation is quite severe. The local authorities work on hard and soft infrastructure to implement disaster risk reduction but less for ecosystem-based solution. However, promoting adaptation efforts in the local policy document is still necessary for sustainable development at the local level.

Perceived national wealth increases support for structural climate policies

Climate change cannot be successfully mitigated solely through individual-level actions. Structural change is urgently needed. While wealthy countries have the greatest capacity to implement structural change, the question remains to what extent perceived country wealth is associated with support for structural climate policies over individual-level behaviour change policies. We found in Australian (Study 1) and UK (Study 2) samples (N = 967) that perceived national wealth positively predicts people's support for structural (vs. individual-level behaviour) change policies. In an experimental (Study 3, N = 401) and a quasi-experimental study (Study 4, N = 400; comparing South African and UK participants), we found that people in both wealthy and poor countries more strongly prefer wealthy (vs. poor) countries to implement structural (vs. individual-level behaviour) change policies. There was some evidence that these effects are mediated by perceiving wealthy countries to have a moral obligation to contribute to the solution of global issues. The findings suggest that there is considerable public support for wealthy countries to spearhead structural transformations to limit climate change. These insights can help environmental organisations and policymakers to gain public support for climate policies by emphasising their countries' moral obligation to implement change and by countering blame-deflecting narratives.

Secure and defensive forms of national identity and public support for climate policies

The European Union currently aims to achieve fossil fuels independence and to become the first climate-neutral continent by endorsing the Green Deal policy agenda. In this work, we focus on the role of secure and defensive forms of national identity in shaping citizens’ readiness to support versus oppose public policies aimed at climate neutrality and support for sources of energy perceived as traditional and non-traditional. Namely, we distinguish between national narcissism, which is a belief that one’s national group is exceptional and deserves external recognition underlain by unsatisfied psychological needs, and secure national identification, which reflects feelings of strong bonds and solidarity with one’s ingroup members, and sense of satisfaction in group membership. We hypothesize that in contrast to secure national identification, national narcissism, due to its motivational underpinnings, is related negatively to support for climate-change mitigating solutions. In Study 1 (N = 1134), we show that while secure national identity is positively related to support for developing renewable sources of energy and the Green Deal policy agenda, national narcissism is positively related to support for fossil fuel energy (and vice versa). In Study 2 (N = 1016), we found that allocating funds for reinforcing the green image of a country goes hand in hand with the support for policies aimed at mitigating climate change among those high in national narcissism. We put these findings in perspective by discussing the role of national narratives around the traditional sources of energy in shaping support for climate change mitigating policies.

Positive, global, and health or environment framing bolsters public support for climate policies

Public support for climate policies is important for their efficacy, yet little is known about how different framings of climate change affect public support for climate policies around the world. Here we report findings from a conjoint experiment of 7,500 adults in five countries – China, Germany, India, UK, and USA – to identify climate messages that elicit greater support for policies to tackle climate change. Messages were randomly varied on four attributes: positive (opportunity) or negative (threat) framings, theme (health, environment, economy, migration), scale (individual, community, national, global), and time (current, 2030, 2050). We find that a positive frame, health and environmental frames, and global and immediate frames bolster public support. We examine differences between countries, and across groups within countries – particularly focusing on the effect of these frames among individuals that are unconcerned about climate change. Among this group, positive and health frames increase the likelihood of support for climate policies, indicating the relevance of these frames for shifting policy preferences for different audience groups.

Co-dynamics of climate policy stringency and public support

Public support for stringent climate policies is currently weak. We develop a model to study the dynamics of public support for climate policies. It comprises three interconnected modules: one calculates policy impacts; a second translates these into policy support mediated by social influence; and a third represents the regulator adapting policy stringency depending on public support. The model combines general-equilibrium and agent-based elements and is empirically grounded in a household survey, which allows quantifying policy support as a function of effectiveness, personal wellbeing and distributional effects. We apply our approach to compare two policy instruments, namely carbon taxation and performance standards, and identify intertemporal trajectories that meet the climate target and count on sufficient public support. Our results highlight the importance of social influence, opinion stability and income inequality for public support of climate policies. Our model predicts that carbon taxation consistently generates more public support than standards. Finally, we show that under moderate social influence and income inequality, an increasing carbon tax trajectory combined with progressive revenue redistribution receives the highest average public support over time.

Shelter from the storm: How perceived extreme event experience and government trust shape public support for climate change mitigation policy in the United States

AbstractAs emergency managers and other government and nongovernmental organizations in the United States cope with a variety of catastrophic events, including unprecedented natural disasters and a global pandemic, the role of government trust in responding to and addressing the threat from such events has gained attention among policy and public administration scholars. How changes in government trust following extreme events may influence public support for government‐led climate policy is an unknown, yet potentially important, dimension of climate mitigation policy preference formation. To address this gap, we analyze cross‐sectional survey responses (n = 1756) collected from 10 communities that experienced extreme weather events. We find that perceptions of event‐related harm are positively associated with an increase in self‐reported local government trust following an extreme weather event, and that increases in local and federal government trust are associated with higher levels of support for climate change mitigation policy. Our findings have implications for emergency managers, policymakers, and policy scholars as they consider how interactions with various levels of government during and after extreme events shapes public support for climate policy.

The effects of policy design complexity on public support for climate policy

Abstract Important challenges like climate change require transformative policy responses. According to a growing public policy literature, such transformative responses typically require complex policy packages that bundle various individual policy instruments to complement each other, compensate transition losers, and create positive synergies. Nevertheless, while adding new instruments to a package can increase policy effectiveness, it comes at a price: increased policy design complexity. Increased complexity potentially leads to fundamental public misperceptions that undermine policy legitimacy and feasibility. Here, I argue that complex policy packages affect public opinion through a compensation, policy perception, and design complexity mechanism. To test this argument, this study assesses if citizens evaluate proposals for isolated climate policies related to food and mobility behaviors differently to complex policy packages. Employing a novel two-stage conjoint-experimental approach with 9115 respondents from the USA and Germany, the study shows that policy packaging increases citizens’ perceived policy effectiveness to reduce climate pollutants, but also perceived restrictions on citizens’ lifestyles. Moreover, increased design complexity can lead citizens to pay special attention to salient costly parts of policy packages. However, increased design complexity does not fundamentally reverse preferences. Through packaging desired and undesired policy instruments, policymakers can increase public support for transformative climate policies.

Domestic Provision of Global Public Goods: How Other Countries’ Behavior Affects Public Support for Climate Policy

Abstract When considering public support for domestic policies that contribute to a global public good, such as climate change mitigation, the behavior of other countries is commonly regarded as pivotal. Using survey experiments in China and the United States we find that other countries’ behavior matters for public opinion, but in a contingent manner. When citizens learn that other countries decrease their emissions, this leads to support for further domestic action. Yet, support for reciprocal behavior is not a necessary consequence of other countries increasing their emissions. Responding in-kind to emissions increases abroad depends upon the home country’s past behavior and who the other country is. Our results imply that the international context remains important, despite global climate policy now relying more on coordinated unilateral action and polycentric governance. They also show, however, that we need to pay greater attention to contingent effects of countries’ positive and negative behavior in this area.

Facing Trade-Offs: The Resilience of Public Support for Climate Policies

Facing Trade-Offs: The Resilience of Public Support for Climate Policies

What are the Determinants of Public Support for Climate Policies? A Review of the Empirical Literature

Abstract Climate change is one of the most challenging problems of our times. To be effective, climate policies need to receive citizens’ approval. The objective of this article is to examine both the extent of individuals’ support for different climate policies and key determinants of policy support. To this end, an overview of the related empirical literature is provided. The article shows that the empirical literature on public climate policy support is very diverse in terms of concepts, measures of policy support and empirical approaches. Moreover, the bulk of the existing empirical literature has a strong U.S. focus. The article concludes that public support for climate policies is rather a matter of climate change beliefs and party identification, and not primarily a question of socio-demographic background. The article also offers suggestions for future research as well as policy recommendations.

Using the three-pillar model of sustainability to understand lay reactions to climate policy: A multilevel approach

Public support for climate policy is necessary to enact the large-scale changes needed to mitigate climate change. We use the three-pillar model of sustainability as a conceptual framework to examine how individuals evaluate climate policies and how these evaluations predict policy support. We consider individuals’ evaluations of 1) environmental impacts (i.e., perceived policy effectiveness), 2) economic impacts, and 3) social impacts of policies. We use multilevel modeling to disentangle variance in policy support attributable to between-person differences (i.e., aggregated policy support) and within-person variations across policies. First, we fit a multilevel factor model to our dataset (Nobs = 1056) to identify whether the factor structure of the three-pillar model at both the between-person and within-person levels of analysis. The three-pillar model emerged at the within-person level. In contrast, items instead loaded onto two factors at the between-person level: benefits and harms. Thus, we created within- and between-person constructs matching these factors. Results from multilevel regressions suggest that a) individuals who anticipate more benefits and fewer harms of climate policies (as a set) also tend to report greater aggregated support for climate change policies, and b) anticipating environmental benefits, economic impacts and social impacts to be above average for a certain policy (relative to other policies) predicts greater support for that policy. Our work suggests the relevance of differentiating between who is most likely to support climate policies in general (i.e., between-person differences) as well as policy-specific evaluations associated with support for some policies over others (i.e. within-person variation in support).

How to Encourage Pro-Environmental Behaviors without Crowding Out Public Support for Climate Policies

Utilities, governmental agencies, and nonprofit organizations all use interventions meant to spur the public to act in ways that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as by turning down the heat in the winter and limiting beef consumption. Yet critics contend that these interventions promote relatively trivial behaviors while reducing the perceived need to support regulations that would have much more of an effect but might require, say, increased taxes or effort. In other words, promoting behavioral interventions can crowd out the public's support for climate policies. But this undesirable consequence is avoidable. In this article, I propose evidence-based guidelines, which I collectively call the SESH formula, for implementing climate-related behavioral interventions that avoid crowding out support for effective policies. They hold that interventions should (a) push for specific high-impact behaviors, (b) accurately convey the behaviors’ effectiveness, (c) promote behaviors that are similar to (that is, are clearly related to) desirable policies, and (d) frame the desired behaviors as steps toward a higher goal—in this case, climate-change mitigation. I review the evidence for each SESH guideline and identify areas for future research into behavioral interventions that will complement, rather than undermine, climate-change policies.