Fast track or Slo-Mo? Public support and temporal preferences for phasing out fossil fuel cars in the United States

Abstract

Policies to phase out fossil fuel cars are key to averting dangerous and irreversible changes to the earth's climate. Given the potential impacts of such policies on every-day routines and behaviours, the factors that might increase or decrease their public acceptance require investigation. Here we study the role of specific policy design features in shaping Americans' preferences for policy proposals to phase out fossil fuel cars. In light of the urgency of action against climate change, we are specifically interested in citizens' preferences with respect to the timing of phase-out policies.Based on a demographically representative sample of 1,520 American residents rating 24,320 hypothetical policy scenarios in a conjoint experiment, we find that Americans prefer phase-out policies to be implemented no later than 2030. Policy features other than timing are also important:higher policy costs significantly reduce public support; subsidies for alternative technologies are preferred over taxes and bans; and policy co-benefits in terms of pollution reduction increase public support only when they are substantial. The study also investigates the role of individual characteristics in shaping policy preferences, finding that perceived psychological distance of climate change and party identification influence policy preferences. The results of this study have important implications for the political feasibility of rapid decarbonization initiatives like the 'Green New Deal'that are now being discussed in the US and beyond. Among these is the insight that smart sequencing of policies (early implementation of subsidies for low-emission technologies, followed by tax increases and/or bans) might help ensure majority support for a fossil fuel car phase-out.

Immediate rewards or delayed gratification? A conjoint survey experiment of the public’s policy preferences

“…Assessing temporality in public preferences for reducing the number of fossil fuel cars in the USA, also Rinscheid et al (2020) conclude that the public's unwillingness to support such long-term goals may have been overestimated. The authors do not include a measure of (un)certainty, but instead they demonstrate the significance of psychological distance, which is linked with partisanship: people who, for whatever reason, feel a sense of closeness to environmental concerns, are willing to support major policy shifts aimed at mitigating climate change.…”

What shapes public support for climate change mitigation policies? The role of descriptive social norms and elite cues

“…Because this study focuses on the extent to which top-down and bottom-up signals shape climate policy preferences, we focus on the elite cues attribute in the analysis below. The extent to which the policy design attributes influence citizens’ preferences is analyzed in depth elsewhere (Rinscheid et al , 2020).…”

“…preferences, we focus on the elite cues attribute in the analysis below. The extent to which the policy design attributes influence citizens' preferences is analyzed in depth elsewhere (Rinscheid et al, 2020).…”

Deliberate decline: An emerging frontier for the study and practice of decarbonization

“…A considerable number of works have emerged since 2015 on coal phase-outs as indicated by the rightmost part of Figure 2 (Blondeel, Van de Graaf, & Haesebrouck, 2020;Johnson et al, 2015;Lehotský, Černoch, Osička, & Ocelík, 2019;Rinscheid & Wüstenhagen, 2019;Rosenbloom, 2018). Over the past year or so, researchers have also begun to investigate the phase-out of internal combustion engine cars (Meckling & Nahm, 2019;Rinscheid, Pianta, & Weber, 2020). Taken together, this literature suggests that various policy instruments may help promote the phase-out of particular technologies or infrastructures.…”

“…Empirical research adopting an industry‐level perspective has attended to a variety of political factors surrounding phase‐outs, including the political processes leading to the (non‐)adoption of phase‐out policies (Rentier et al, 2019; Rosenbloom, 2018) and public attitudes towards such policies (Rinscheid et al, 2020; Rinscheid & Wüstenhagen, 2019). Importantly, technology phase‐outs are prone to political resistance by affected industries and regions (Krause et al, 1990; Rentier et al, 2019; Trencher, Healy, Hasegawa, & Asuka, 2019), which requires not only dedicated communication efforts to augment public support but also policy designs that ease the burden of adjustment, de‐risk investments into low‐carbon alternatives, and manage infrastructural challenges (Edenhofer et al, 2018; Stognief, Walk, Schöttker, & Oei, 2019).…”