Environmental Concern Leads to Trade Skepticism on the Political Left and Right

Abstract

The environmental implications of international trade appear to be associated with public backlash against trade liberalization and efforts at greening international trade. Because public support is essential to environmental and trade policy-making alike, we examine the trade–environment nexus from a public opinion perspective. We investigate whether negative attitudes toward trade are in fact fueled by concern over its environmental consequences. We argue that environmental concern affects how citizens evaluate the costs and benefits of trade, and that such evaluation is moderated by political ideology. The empirical analysis relies on a large representative survey and a population-based survey experiment in Switzerland, a small open economy. We show that environmental concern leads to decreasing appreciation of and support for international trade, with different manifestations of trade skepticism on the political left and right. This suggests (i) that policy-makers should focus more on greening global supply chains, and thus trade, if they wish to sustain public support for liberal international trade policy; and (ii) that the public follows informational cues on the environmental impacts of trade.

Deontological and consequentialist preferences towards arms exports: A comparative conjoint experiment in France and Germany

“…Recent scholarship has transcended the view that citizens' decision‐making is shaped exclusively by materialist considerations and has consequently expanded the foundations on which preferences form. This evolving literature shows, for example, that normative reasoning can shape public support for sanctions or even war (Onderco, 2017; Tomz & Weeks, 2020); that the public cares about human rights violations in other countries, sacrificing domestic economic benefits to punish human rights violators (Allendoerfer, 2017); and that citizens take into account non‐economic factors in trade preference formation (Kolcava et al., 2021; Rudolph, Quoß, et al., 2023). However, these findings are mostly motivated by a consequentialist calculus, where citizens form preferences over policies based on the effects they have.…”