Understanding U.S. public support for domestic climate change policies

By R. Shwom, D. Bidwell, Amy Dan, Thomas Dietz. 2010

188 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract In the U.S., public support for federal, state and local efforts to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs) continues to be a crucial element of the political viability of these proposals. We present a detailed analysis of the reasons given by the general public of Michigan and Virginia for supporting or rejecting a number of policies that could be implemented to meet GHG reductions. The data allow us to analyze the relationships between reasons provided by respondents, social psychological and demographic characteristics, and policy support. This analysis can provide policymakers pragmatic guidance in (1) developing tactics to engage the public that build on current concerns about climate change policies and (2) crafting and communicating policies that garner support from various segments of the public. This analysis also raises theoretical questions regarding the relationship between public discourse on environmental issues and the formation of public policy support. We suggest that future efforts to understand the U.S. dynamics of public support for climate change policies could benefit from understanding the public discursive and the reasoning processes that underlie public opinion formation.

Subfields: Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a7e8ccd267f234db14aba42eebe8ebc90a14324b

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In Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Applying the Risk Information Seeking and Processing Model to Examine Support for Climate Change Mitigation Policy (2014, background): “Risk perceptions were measured based on the product terms of perceived susceptibility that climate change will harm “me and my family,” “my local community,” “the United States as a whole,” “people all over the world,” and “nature (not including humans)” and perceived severity of these threats, resp”
What explains public support for climate policies? A review of empirical and experimental studies (2016, background): “Research shows that people use this rationale when considering climate policy (Shwom et al., 2010)”
Institutions, Climate Change, and the Foundations of Long-Term Policymaking (2019, background): “Lastly, survey research consistently finds that individuals dislike climate policies that impose high personal costs (Ansolabehere &Konisky, 2014; Bechtel & Scheve, 2013; Drews & Bergh, 2015; Jagers & Hammar, 2009; Shwom et al., 2010).”
Uncertainty, scepticism and attitudes towards climate change: biased assimilation and attitude polarisation (2012, background): “The everyday meaning of uncertainty is negative, as it is commonly equated with ignorance (Shome & Marx, 2009).”
Individual Factors Influencing Acceptability for Environmental Policies: A Review and Research Agenda (2020, background): “greater support for environmental policies, including taxes [7], transport pricing [14,27,28], climate change mitigation [29,30], renewable energy [26,31], and environmental food policies [32].”
Is climate change an ethical issue? Examining young adults’ beliefs about climate and morality (2012, background): “…to believe that people will be motivated to effectively confront the causes of the problem (i.e., emission of greenhouse gases, consumption; see Shwom et al. 2010 for initial supporting evidence, but see Gardiner 2006 for a more pessimistic outlook); on the other hand, if many individuals fail…”