Climate Policy Support Research Articles

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.

Considering subnational support of climate change policy in the United States and the implications of symbolic policy acts

ABSTRACT While existing literature points to a number of factors that shape subnational support for climate policy, the extant scholarship has struggled to illustrate a clear and convincing explanation for subnational support of climate policy efforts and whether that support is meaningful. By looking to the United States, where subnational actors have an important role in environmental policy development and implementation, we find that legislators’ ideology and membership in the minority party determines sponsorship of climate bills. Specifically, liberal legislators with the fewest opportunities to signal efficacy to their constituents are the most likely to support subnational climate change policy efforts. Given that the individuals most likely to support climate policy efforts are those without capacity, many support efforts may be more symbolic than substantive.

Advances in quantifying power plant CO2 emissions with OCO-2

We present CO2 emission estimates for twenty power plants and related facilities in the United States, India, South Africa, Poland, Russia and South Korea, derived from space-based CO2 observations from NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 (OCO-2) satellite. Improvements to OCO-2 data quality and to our methodology yield improved results relative to earlier work. These new results include emission quantification for both larger and smaller power plants, the first power plant emission estimate based on ocean glint data and emissions from a small city with multiple industrial facilities. CO2 emission estimates are compared against reported facility emissions where available, including high temporal resolution data for the eight US sites. The difference with respect to reported values for the US sites ranges from 1.4% to 26.7%, with a mean of 15.1%, although the estimated emission sum for all US sites is within 0.8% of the reported value, suggesting the errors are largely random. This finding reinforces the importance of revisit rate for future space-based emission monitoring systems and furthermore confirms that making multiple overpasses of a power plant can reduce errors to an accuracy useful to support climate policy.

Current surveys may underestimate climate change skepticism evidence from list experiments in Germany and the USA.

Strong public support is a prerequisite for ambitious and thus costly climate change mitigation policy, and strong public concern over climate change is a prerequisite for policy support. Why, then, do most public opinion surveys indicate rather high levels of concern and rather strong policy support, while de facto mitigation efforts in most countries remain far from ambitious? One possibility is that survey measures for public concern fail to fully reveal the true attitudes of citizens due to social desirability bias. In this paper, we implemented list-experiments in representative surveys in Germany and the United States (N = 3620 and 3640 respectively) to assess such potential bias. We find evidence that people systematically misreport, that is, understate their disbelief in human caused climate change. This misreporting is particularly strong amongst politically relevant subgroups. Individuals in the top 20% of the income distribution in the United States and supporters of conservative parties in Germany exhibit significantly higher climate change skepticism according to the list experiment, relative to conventional measures. While this does not definitively mean that climate skepticism is a widespread phenomenon in these countries, it does suggest that future research should reconsider how climate change concern is measured, and what subgroups of the population are more susceptible to misreporting and why. Our findings imply that public support for ambitious climate policy may be weaker than existing survey research suggests.

Racial prejudice, education, and views of climate change

AbstractObjectiveWe examine the role of education in shaping attitudes about climate change and how it interacts with racial prejudice.MethodsWe analyze data from the 2012 and 2016 American National Election Study (ANES) and 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES).ResultsWe identify a paradoxical relationship in which education is associated with both lower levels of racial prejudice and increased support for climate policies, but also strengthens the negative effects of prejudices that persist at higher levels of educational attainment. For individuals with racially prejudiced views, we find that educational attainment decreases both agreement with the scientific consensus and support for climate policies. Our results hold up in evaluating Democrats and Republicans and using alternative measures of racial bias.ConclusionOur results contribute to our understanding of the barriers to action on climate change and the continued salience of racial prejudice in the United States.

Cultural determinants of climate change opinion: familism predicts climate beliefs and policy support among US Latinos

Cultural determinants of climate change opinion: familism predicts climate beliefs and policy support among US Latinos

Do political systems have a lasting effect on climate change concern? Evidence from Germany after reunification

Support for climate policy depends on the public’s perception of climate change costs. Assessing the determinants of climate change attitudes contributes to explaining cross-country differences in climate policy implementation. In this paper, I examine the influence of experience with a political system on individuals’ concern for the consequences of climate change. To address biases introduced by the endogeneity of the political system, I use the natural experiment created by the division and reunification of Germany. I find evidence suggesting that experience with the political system of East Germany has a lasting negative effect on climate change concern that is discernible more than 20 years after reunification. Results suggest that the influence of political institutions on climate change attitudes and policy adoption can persist long after they have been replaced.

Economic impacts and risks of climate change under failure and success of the Paris Agreement.

The Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) represent the world's first effort toward the Paris Agreement goal of keeping global temperature increase well below 2 °C and pursuing 1.5 °C. Little is known about how much the proposed mitigation efforts can reduce the risks and economic damages from unabated climate change and about the consequences if key emitters drop the Paris Agreement. Here, we use CLIMRISK, an integrated assessment model designed to support climate policy at the global, national, and subnational scales where mitigation and adaptation policy decisions are made. We characterize the consequences of unabated climate change and the benefits of current climate policy proposals by means of probabilistic estimates of the economic damages of climate change and uni‐ and multivariate dynamic climate risk indices at a detailed spatial resolution. The results presented reveal that the economic costs and risks are highly unequally distributed between and within countries and larger than previously estimated when warming in urban areas and temporal persistence of impacts are accounted for. Costs and risks can be significantly limited by strict implementation of NDCs, but increase noticeably under noncompliance by large emitters, like the United States.

Anger consensus messaging can enhance expectations for collective action and support for climate mitigation

Media coverage of climate protests within the United States and internationally has shown growing public frustration about governmental responses to climate change. But what are the effects of conveying that people are angry? And how do they contrast with more traditional norm messages about climate policy support? Here, we investigate whether social norm messaging about collective anger can impact perceptions of consensus and public support for climate mitigation. In a pilot study and two survey experiments (total N = 1529), we find that relative to control messages, normative appeals that convey growing public anger about U.S. inaction on climate change (i.e., dynamic anger consensus messaging) can enhance Americans' consensus estimates of other Americans' climate-related beliefs and support for mitigation policy, and expectations for future climate-mitigating collective action. Moreover, exposure to a dynamic anger consensus message led to similar estimates of Americans’ policy support and belief in climate change as messages that explicitly conveyed public support for climate mitigation (Study 1) or consensus belief in anthropogenic climate change (Study 2). When tailored for a cross-partisan audience, anger consensus messaging was also effective in bolstering personal support for climate mitigation (Study 2). Notably, similar effects were observed across partisan groups. These findings suggest that, by signaling shared motivational states, emotion consensus appeals can enhance expectations for social change, with the potential to mobilize bipartisan support for climate mitigation.

Moderating spillover: Focusing on personal sustainable behavior rarely hinders and can boost climate policy support

A successful climate movement must make progress on two fronts: widely adopting behavior changes to reduce emissions and achieving structural changes through climate policy. Some research has suggested people might see sustainable behavior as a substitute (rather than a complement) for climate policy. Does reflecting on sustainable behavior strengthen or undermine climate policy support? In the present research we find that reflecting on sustainable behavior rarely harms policy support. It only occurs when policies are framed as having costs fall on individuals (rather than industry) and when reflection on one’s behavior is not connected to one's values or identity. Here, people may reject a policy because they feel they already are taking action. Conversely, reflecting on behaviors in connection to one’s values or identity actually increases climate policy support, and leads people to feel that policies like a carbon tax, even if personally costly, reflect their values and identity.

Weathering growing polarization? The European Parliament and EU foreign climate policy ambitions

ABSTRACT The European Union (EU) faces two parallel trends of growing polarization. Externally, ambitious climate action has become more contested and global power relations are shifting. Internally, European elections brought more Eurosceptics to Parliament, altering its political majorities and making it more difficult for mainstream parties to continue the European Parliament’s (EP) long-standing policy positions such as ambitious climate policy. We analyze the impact of growing internal and external polarization trends on Members of European Parliament (MEPs) and political group’s positions on EU foreign climate policy ambitions between 2009 and 2019. Using an original dataset of plenary debates, we find that the EP as a whole has remained surprisingly stable in its support of ambitious foreign climate policy. Yet, when looking at the qualitative details of MEPs’ positions, we uncover significant variance in the ways in which MEPs from various political groups perceive the EU’s global role over time.

The role of national affluence, carbon emissions, and democracy in Europeans’ climate perceptions

There are differences across Europe in elements of climate citizenship, including climate concern, perceived responsibility, and willingness to support and take climate action. This paper examines how individual-level climate perceptions correspond to a country's contribution to climate change and its ability to develop climate policies. Data from the European Social Survey Round 8 (23 European countries, n = 44,387) was used to explore how national-level factors (affluence as per capita GDP, carbon emissions as per capita CO2 emissions, and democracy as electoral democracy index) are related to individual-level climate perceptions (climate concern, perceived climate responsibility, climate policy support, and personal climate action). The analysis shows that the studied individual-level perceptions are all linked, and that perceived climate responsibility is a factor that helps in understanding how individual-level climate views are connected. Further, national-level affluence and democracy are connected to stronger individual-level perceptions both directly and through mediating their connections. Our results suggest that achieving ambitious climate policy targets in Europe could benefit from focusing on the role of perceived climate responsibility in boosting policy support and action. Moreover, the connection between national-level (democratic and economic) factors and public climate perceptions emphasises the need to place climate policies in a wider context.

Australian voters' attitudes to climate action and their social-political determinants.

Australia is a relative laggard on climate policy, amidst social and political fractures despite rising support for climate policy in opinion polls. In the 2019 Australian federal election, which was dubbed the ‘climate election’, the opposition campaigned on comparatively ambitious climate action but the government was returned on a status quo policy. We explore the social-political determinants of climate attitudes and how they are positioned in relation to voting behaviour, in the context of the 2019 election. We use a large nationally representative survey of Australian voters (n = 2,033), and employ univariate and multivariate ordinal logistic regression models to uncover correlates. We find that a large majority of voters think it is important for Australia to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, the importance given to emissions reductions is sharply divided along lines of political party preference. Holding pro-climate action attitudes consistently correlates with voting for progressive political parties and having higher levels of education. We also find a strong age cohort divide, with younger people holding stronger pro-climate attitudes than older people, raising the question whether we are seeing the emergence of a new generation expressing strong pro-climate action and progressive political attitudes that will persist over time. We conduct population ageing scenarios to project changes to public opinion, by age group, into the future. These indicate that strong support for climate action would increase by about four percentage points over the coming decade as younger voters replace the old, if attitudes within cohorts remained fixed. We conclude that while cleavages in climate attitudes in Australia are set to continue, efforts to promote climate delay are bound to have a limited shelf life as a growing majority of voters accepts the need for climate action.

Emphasizing urgency of climate change is insufficient to increase policy support

<h2>Summary</h2> Although many people are concerned about climate change, active public support for ambitious policies is still lagging behind. How can this gap be closed? Recent work has theorized that the perceived urgency of climate change drives public support for climate policy, but this lacks empirical evidence. Using advanced sparse regressions and comparative survey-embedded framing experiments with 9,911 eligible voters in Germany and the United States, we empirically studied the role of perceived urgency. Our study provides two findings. First, although perceived urgency is key in driving support for "low-cost" mitigation policies, it does not lead to more support for "high-cost" mitigation policies where the behavioral implications are visible. Second, while temporal reframing does not increase policy support or feelings of dread, context information about demand-side mitigation increases support for such costly climate policies. The results are particularly relevant for democracies, where ambitious policies require the support of citizens.

Visual art inspired by climate change-An analysis of audience reactions to 37 artworks presented during 21st UN climate summit in Paris.

This paper suggests and tests a psychological model of environmental art perception and subsequent support for climate change policies. The model is based on findings from art perception and environmental psychology, which indicate that the response of the viewer to the artwork is (1) first an emotional reaction, which can be positive and/or negative. The emotional activation leads to (2) evaluation of the perceived quality of the artwork. This forms the first impression of the artwork the viewer gets, which then triggers (3) reflections on the artwork that are finally related to support for climate policies. The model test uses data collected at the ArtCOP21 that accompanied the 21st UN climate summit in Paris. At 37 connected events, the research team collected 883 audience responses with a brief quantitative paper-pencil questionnaire. The data were analyzed using a multilevel-structural equation modeling approach. Results support the suggested theoretical model. Moreover, the effect of reflections on the artwork on support for climate policies is moderated by environmental attitudes, meaning the lower the environmental attitudes, the higher the effect of reflections on policy support. Finally, artwork features like color, size, displaying something personal, etc., could be identified that had a significant relation to differences on the artwork level regarding the first impression of the artwork and the reflections elicited. The study shows that being confronted with climate change-related artwork relates at least in the short run to increased climate policy support, which is mostly channeled through an emotional activation with following cognitive processing. Features of the artwork relate to how strongly and which emotions are activated.

The climate decade: Changing attitudes on three continents

Using identical surveys a decade apart, we examine how attitudes and willingness to pay (WTP) for climate policies have changed in the United States, China, and Sweden. All three countries exhibit an increased willingness to pay for climate mitigation. Ten years ago, Sweden had a larger fraction of believers in anthropogenic climate change and a higher WTP for mitigation, but today the national averages are more similar. Although we find convergence in public support for climate policy across countries, there is considerable divergence in both WTP and climate attitudes within countries. Political polarization explains part of this divergence.

Different Countries, Common Support for Climate Change Mitigation: The Case of Germany and Poland

There are numerous studies assessing the influence of individual sociological, political, and demographic factors on attitudes towards climate change. However, there is still a need for a deeper understanding of the reasons behind these attitudes and for research based on results from more than one country. This study empirically examines a range of psychosocial and demographic determinants of support for climate policy (renewable energy, energy efficiency and carbon tax) in Germany and Poland (n = 1969). The results show that the societies of both countries, despite significant differences in income, culture and political stance on climate change, similarly support implementation of climate policies. For both countries valid predictors of support are: awareness, emotional response to climate crisis, sense of control, and belief in effectiveness of solutions; the study also shows predictors relevant in only one country. Factor analysis identified similar dimensions of attitudes toward climate change in both countries. The main findings show that support for climate policy is high in both countries and that the public is ready to accept more ambitious climate goals. Despite the differences between the countries, a coherent climate policy seems justified. The study also shows differences between the countries and provides recommendations for policymakers.

The role of trust in citizen acceptance of climate policy: Comparing perceptions of government competence, integrity and value similarity

This study examines the role of citizen trust in explaining climate policy support, using the case of low-carbon transportation policies in Canada – namely a carbon tax, electric vehicle purchase subsidies, and three regulations. Through a representative survey of 1,552 Canadian citizens collected in 2019, we assess: 1) support and opposition of policies, 2) trust in several key actors, and 3) other factors associated with policy support. The majority of respondents support purchase incentives and most regulations, whereas support is considerably lower for a carbon tax. Factor analysis identifies three different types of trust in key actors: competence, integrity, and value similarity. Fewer than 50% of respondents trust their national or provincial government regarding climate change issues in general or according to each type of trust. Regression analysis assesses the role of trust in policy support, while controlling for respondent values and demographic characteristics. Perceptions of national government “competence” is the only trust variable that is consistently positively associated with support for all five policies tested. Other forms of trust (integrity and value similarity) and trust in the provincial government are not consistently associated with policy 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.