Climate Policy Support Research Articles

Timely climate proposals. Discourse networks and (dis)continuity in European policies

ABSTRACT How do discursive fields influence support for climate policies? The European Green Deal (EGD) has gained media attention in part because it was presented as a cross-sectorial strategy aiming to ‘transform the European economy’. Our analysis focuses on two specific policy proposals of the EGD: the carbon border adjustment mechanism and the reform for a greener Common Agricultural Policy. By comparing their discourse network structure, we aim to understand policy (dis)continuity introduced with the EGD. We use an original longitudinal dataset and discourse network analysis to map framing dynamics over time and understand how particular frames can gather support in policy networks. Our study shows that two elements favor policy change, namely the resonance of new frames with the discursive field and the presence of brokers connecting previously disconnected actors or coalitions. This paper is relevant for scholars interested in the discursive layer of policy networks as well as (dis)continuity in policy debates.

GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE COMMUNICATION: THE CONCEPTUAL ASPECT

The article examines the conceptual component of climate communications and emphasizes that in the current conditions of global climate change, climate communications is an integral element of the implementation of climate policy and is defined as a process related to increasing public awareness of global climate changes and the formation of understanding and support climate policy, measures for adaptation and mitigation of the consequences of global climate change at all levels. Theories and concepts that make up the basis of climate communications are considered, in particular, the theory of globalization and globalization of communication, new humanism, sustainable development, ecological culture, climate justice, and climate theory. It is shown that all climate theories can be conditionally divided according to their explanation of the causes of global climate change, in particular, anthropogenic causes, causes independent of human activity and denial of climate change and proposing ways to solve global climate challenges. The definition of “climate change” in the UN’s basic documents shows that the UN recognizes both approaches and agrees that climate change can be caused by both human activities and natural causes. The concept of climate humanism in relation to climate communications is proposed, which combines two key ideas: the need to solve global climate challenges and the importance of humanity’s participation in this process for the protection and well-being of humanity in the context of a changing climate environment. In the author’s opinion, in the context of the concept of climate humanism, climate communications can be considered as its component and a universal tool that unites approaches to the implementation of information and communication campaigns. It is concluded that the presence of many theories and concepts regarding the understanding of the causes and methods of overcoming global climate change has led to a state of uncertainty in modern scientific thought, which should be taken into account when implementing climate communications.

The impact of anxiety and intolerance of uncertainty on climate change distress, policy support, and pro-environmental behaviour.

As the threat of climate change continues to grow, bolstering individual-level support for climate change initiatives is crucial. More research is needed to better understand how individual difference factors, such as climate change anxiety and intolerance of uncertainty (IU), may shape how people perceive climate change and respond to climate change messaging. To date, the majority of published studies have not taken these individual difference factors into consideration, and IU has been particularly neglected in the climate change literature. This study examined the independent effects of climate change anxiety and IU on three climate change-related outcomes: climate-related distress, support for climate change policies, and behavioural engagement. Participants were Florida residents (N = 441) who completed an online survey, including measures of climate change anxiety and IU. Participants then watched a video describing climate change consequences and completed three outcome measures: post-video distress, climate change policy support, and behavioural engagement. Controlling for demographic covariates, both climate change anxiety (β = .43, p < .001) and IU (β = .27, p < .001) were associated with greater post-video distress, but only IU independently predicted greater policy support (β = .10, p = .034) and behavioural engagement (β = .12, p = .017). Our findings suggest that IU may be an important factor in promoting pro-environmental behaviour and policy support, but climate change anxiety may increase emotional distress without boosting meaningful behaviours or support. Our findings highlight the potential influence of cognitive factors on climate change engagement and suggest that invoking uncertainty rather than anxiety may be more effective in catalysing effective environmental engagement.

Emotional responses to climate change information and their effects on policy support

IntroductionAs emotions are strong predictors of climate policy support, we examined multiple discrete emotions that people experience in reaction to various types of information about climate change: its causes, the scientific consensus, its impacts, and solutions. Specifically, we assessed the relationships between four types of messages and five discrete emotions (guilt, anger, hope, fear, and sadness), testing whether these emotions mediate the impacts of information on support for climate policy.MethodsAn online experiment exposed participants (N = 3,023) to one of four informational messages, assessing participants' emotional reactions to the message and their support for climate change mitigation policies as compared to a no-message control group.ResultsEach message, except the consensus message, enhanced the feeling of one or more emotions, and all of the emotions, except guilt, were positively associated with policy support. Two of the messages had positive indirect effects on policy support: the impacts message increased sadness, which in turn increased policy support, and the solutions message increased hope, which increased policy support. However, the solutions message also reduced every emotion except hope, while the impacts, causes, and consensus messages each suppressed hope.DiscussionThese findings indicate that climate information influences multiple emotions simultaneously and that the aroused emotions may conflict with one another in terms of fostering support for climate change mitigation policies. To avoid simultaneously arousing a positive motivator while depressing another, message designers should focus on developing content that engages audiences across multiple emotional fronts.

Identifying opposition against increased carbon tax and reduced red meat consumption

Identifying the individual characteristics that predict climate policy support can inform strategies to increase support for climate policies. This study examines how individual characteristics predict support for two policies that are central to the Norwegian Climate Plan, namely increasing the carbon tax and reducing red meat consumption. The study relies on survey data collected from a representative sample of Norwegian citizens (N=2001). The findings show that several individual characteristics negatively predict both carbon tax support and willingness to eat less red meat: 1) being less concerned about climate change, 2) having right-wing political orientation, 3) having lower trust in politicians, 4) living in rural areas, 5) having lower education, and 6) being male. Strategies to increase support for carbon tax and meat reduction should pay particular attention to these groups. Future research should address how to make climate policies more attractive among these segments of the population.

Investigating the Mental Health Impacts of Climate Change in Youth: Design and Implementation of the International Changing Worlds Study

As climate change continues unabated, research is increasingly focused on capturing and quantifying the lesser-known psychological responses and mental health implications of this humanitarian and environmental crisis. There has been a particular interest in the experiences of young people, who are more vulnerable for a range of reasons, including their developmental stage, the high rates of mental health conditions among this population, and their relative lack of agency to address climate threats. The different geographic and sociocultural settings in which people are coming of age afford certain opportunities and present distinct challenges and exposures to climate hazards. Understanding the diversity of lived experiences is vitally important for informing evidence-based, locally led psychosocial support and social and climate policies. In this Project Report we describe the design and implementation of the “Changing Worlds” study, focusing on our experiences and personal reflections as a transdisciplinary collaboration representing the UK, India, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Barbados, the Philippines, and the USA. The project was conceived within the planetary health paradigm, aimed at characterizing and quantifying the impacts of human-mediated environmental systems changes on youth mental health and wellbeing. With input from local youth representatives, we designed and delivered a series of locally adapted surveys asking young people about their mental health and wellbeing, as well as their thoughts, emotions, and perceived agency in relation to the climate crisis and the global COVID-19 pandemic. This project report outlines the principles that guided the study design and describes the conceptual and practical hurdles we navigated as a distributed and interdisciplinary research collaboration working in different institutional, social, and research governance settings. Finally, we highlight lessons learned, specify our recommendations for other collaborative research projects in this space, and touch upon the next steps for our work. This project explicitly balances context sensitivity and the need for quantitative, globally comparable data on how youth are responding to and coping with environmental change, inspiring a new vision for a global community of practice on mental health in climate change.

Key predictors for climate policy support and political mobilization: The role of beliefs and preferences

Public support and political mobilization are two crucial factors for the adoption of ambitious climate policies in line with the international greenhouse gas reduction targets of the Paris Agreement. Despite their compound importance, they are mainly studied separately. Using a random forest machine-learning model, this article investigates the relative predictive power of key established explanations for public support and mobilization for climate policies. Predictive models may shape future research priorities and contribute to theoretical advancement by showing which predictors are the most and least important. The analysis is based on a pre-election conjoint survey experiment on the Swiss CO2 Act in 2021. Results indicate that beliefs (such as the perceived effectiveness of policies) and policy design preferences (such as for subsidies or tax-related policies) are the most important predictors while other established explanations, such as socio-demographics, issue salience (the relative importance of issues) or political variables (such as the party affiliation) have relatively weak predictive power. Thus, beliefs are an essential factor to consider in addition to explanations that emphasize issue salience and preferences driven by voters’ cost-benefit considerations.

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.

Emotional reactions to climate change: a comparison across France, Germany, Norway, and the United Kingdom.

We present a study of emotional reactions to climate change utilizing representative samples from France, Germany, Norway, and the United Kingdom (UK). Drawing on appraisal theories of emotion, we examine relations between appraisals, emotions, and behavioral intentions in the context of climate change. We compare the four countries concerning emotional differences and commonalities and relate our findings to pertinent models of cultural values. Five distinct emotions were measured: worry, hope, fear, outrage, and guilt. In addition, the survey asked respondents to appraise a set of climate-related statements, such as the causality of climate change, or the efficacy of mitigation efforts. Also, a set of climate-relevant actions, such as willingness to reduce energy consumption or support for climate policies, was assessed. Findings show that appraisals of human causation and moral concern were associated with worry and outrage, and appraisals of efficacy and technological solutions were associated with hope. Worry and outrage are associated with intentions to reduce one's energy consumption, whereas hope and guilt are related to support for policies such as tax and price increases. A country comparison shows that French respondents score high on outrage and worry and tend to engage in individual behaviors to mitigate climate change, whereas Norwegian respondents score high on hope and show a tendency to support policies of cost increase. Generally, worry is the most and guilt the least intense emotion. Moral concerns and perceived collective efficacy of one's country in addressing climate change are relatively strong in France, while beliefs in human causation and in negative impacts of climate change prevail in Germany, and confidence in technological solutions are prevalent in Norway. In sum, findings reveal typical patterns of emotional responses in the four countries and confirm systematic associations between emotions and appraisals as well as between emotions and behaviors. Relating these findings to models of cultural values reveals that Norway, endorsing secular and egalitarian values, is characterized by hope and confidence in technological solutions, whereas France and Germany, emphasizing relatively more hierarchical and traditional values, are rather characterized by fear, outrage, and support for behavioral restrictions imposed by climate change policies.

Breath, Love, Walk? The Impact of Mindfulness Interventions on Climate Policy Support and Environmental Attitudes

Mindfulness practices have the potential to induce the cognitive and behavioral changes needed to foster pro-environmental behavior and increase support toward sustainable and climate-oriented policies. However, the empirical evidence of the effectiveness of meditation on sustainable behavior is limited and mostly confined to correlational studies, often based on the same type of mindfulness interventions. In this paper, we report the results of an online experiment (n = 1000) comparing the impact of three different short-term mindfulness interventions on various (self-reported and incentivized) measures of mindfulness state and sustainable behavior. While only one of our interventions is found to impact environmental attitude and climate policy support directly, we show that the three meditation practices indirectly foster sustainable behavior through preidentified mediators. These results are relevant for organizations and policymakers who seek to foster climate policy support and environmental attitudes in their stakeholders.

Public perceptions of climate tipping points.

Coverage of climate tipping points has rapidly increased over the past 20 years. Despite this upsurge, there has been precious little research into how the public perceives these abrupt and/or irreversible large-scale risks. This article provides a nationally representative view on public perceptions of climate tipping points and possible societal responses to them (n = 1773). Developing a mixed-methods survey with cultural cognition theory, it shows that awareness among the British public is low. The public is doubtful about the future effectiveness of humanity's response to climate change in general, and significantly more doubtful about its response to tipping points specifically. Significantly more people with an egalitarian worldview judge tipping points likely to be crossed and to be a significant threat to humanity. All possible societal responses received strong support. The article ends by considering the prospects for 'cultural tipping elements' to tip support for climate policies across divergent cultural worldviews.

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.

Local support of climate change policies in Germany over time

Political conflicts about energy and climate change policies often have local implications, yet little is known about local public opinion towards these policies. Here, we estimate support towards 26 climate change mitigation policies for 402 German counties and for up to four points of time using multilevel regression and poststratification. We find that local support for climate policies varies by up to 60 percentage points across German counties with large disparities between the rural and urban population. While support for the expansion of wind power plants and solar power plants have converged over the last years, attitudes on the phase-out of coal power have polarized across regions. Using a spatial panel analysis, we find that support for the expansion of wind and solar plants correlate with the actual development of solar and wind capacities in these regions. Moreover, the spread of climate policy opinion is strongly determined by spatial diffusion as change in one region positively influences the trajectory of policy opinion among its neighbors.

Endorsement of scientific inquiry promotes better evaluation of climate policy evidence

Public and scientific consensus about climate change do not align. Problematically, higher scientific knowledge has been associated with lower acceptance of climate information among those with more conservative socio-political ideologies. Positive attitudes towards science can attenuate this effect. We investigated the association between endorsement of scientific inquiry (ESI) and decision-making with scientific evidence about climate policies. Participants rated support for 16 climate policies accompanied by weaker or stronger evidence. In study 1 (N = 503), higher ESI was associated with greater discernment between strongly and weakly evidenced climate policies, irrespective of worldview. In studies 2 (N = 402) and 3 (N = 600), an ESI intervention improved discrimination, and, in study 3, increased ESI specifically for hierarchical/individualistic participants. Unlike ESI, the link between scientific knowledge and evaluation of evidence was influenced by worldview. Increasing ESI might improve the evaluation of scientific evidence and increase public support for evidence-based climate policies.

Editorial introduction: Punctuated equilibrium, multiple streams, environmental governance, and many more

Editorial introduction: Punctuated equilibrium, multiple streams, environmental governance, and many more

Perceived Inequality Increases Support for Structural Solutions to Climate Change

Economic inequality is fuelling climate change. The question, however, remains whether the degree to which people perceive their country as unequal influences their motivation to support climate policies. Across three studies (N = 1,459), we investigated whether perceived inequality influences people’s support for structural climate policies over policies aimed at individual-level behavior change. In an Australian (Study 1) and a United Kingdom (Study 2) sample, we found that perceived inequality positively predicts people’s support for structural (vs. individual-level behavior) change policies, even after controlling for political orientation. In an experimental study (Study 3), people who imagined living in an unequal (vs. equal) country more strongly wanted their country to implement structural (vs. individual-level behavior) change policies. These effects were mediated by a greater desire for drastic changes. This suggests that recognizing one’s country’s unequal wealth distribution may act as a catalyst for the structural change urgently needed to limit climate change.

COVID-19 Pandemic as an Opportunity or Challenge: Applying Psychological Distance Theory and the Co-Benefit Frame to Promote Public Support for Climate Change Mitigation on Social Media

ABSTRACT The current study employs psychological distance theory and the co-benefit frame to explore message framing strategies on social media to promote public support in climate change mitigation during the COVID-19 pandemic. This online 2 × 2 × 2 experiment recruited 708 Chinese college students to examine the effect of temporal distance (2025 vs. 2050), spatial distance (China vs. the global), and the co-benefit frame (present vs. absent) on behavioral intentions to mitigate climate change and policy support in climate change mitigation. Unexpectedly, the MANOVA results showed that the co-benefit frame of COVID-19 and climate change did not have main or interaction that affect behavioral intention and policy support. However, close temporal distance increases support for climate change mitigation. Meanwhile, temporal and spatial distance have an interaction on behavioral intention. Our results suggest that strategies to reduce psychological distance on social media are effective, especially on temporal distance, but bonding two events through psychological distance to promote support for climate change mitigation must be reconsidered.

The role of climate literacy in individual response to climate change: evidence from China

As a basic tool for understanding and making informed decisions about global warming, climate literacy could potentially affect the whole process from individual awareness to public engagement with global climate change. We conducted a nationwide online survey (N = 3067) to assess climate literacy in China and investigate its role in climate change concern and climate policy support. Respondents in our sample were generally well informed about the cause and public engagement dimensions of climate literacy, while demonstrated polarized performance in regard to the consequences of climate change. Climate literacy is a stronger predictor of climate change concern and policy support than other variables such as demographics, experience, and values and can largely enhance the effects of media coverage through the mediation effect. Education and media coverage are found to be significantly associated with climate literacy, while climate experience has little to no effect on climate literacy. Our results somewhat undermine the central role of climate change concern in climate communications and public engagement. Instead, enhancing public climate literacy by disseminating scientific and result-based information from reliable institutions seems to be a more promising path in China.

Climate Change Attitudes and Fossil Fuel Extraction and Distribution in Canada

It is widely accepted that the burning of fossil fuels is a major contributor to climate change. Our question is: How are the related extraction and distribution activities viewed in Canada? This article analyzes Canadian public opinion data on five supply-side energy policies: expanding the oil sands, drilling for oil in the Arctic, fracking, expanding an oil pipeline, and shipping oil by rail. It applies social psychological models to identify factors associated with support for and opposition to these policies. Climate change attitudes have typically been found to be significant predictors of climate policy support. Instead, this study finds that having an ecological worldview is a strong predictor for each of the policies. This suggests that these policies are seen as having an effect on the environment but less so as affecting climate change. Contextual factors, such as region of residence and political orientation, are relevant predictors, suggesting that framing by political parties, industry, and social movement organizations has had a significant effect on support and opposition.