Improving public support for climate action through multilateralism

Abstract

For decades, policymakers have been attempting to negotiate multilateral climate agreements. One of the motivations for securing cooperation among multiple states is the belief that the public will be more supportive of adopting costly climate policies if other countries do so, both because this makes it more likely that important sustainability goals will be reached and because those efforts resonate with widely held fairness norms. However, some recent research suggests that public approval of climate action is independent of the policy choices made by other countries. Here, we present two different experimental studies fielded in multiple countries showing that multilateralism significantly increases public approval of costly climate action. Multilateralism makes climate policy more appealing by improving effectiveness beliefs and the policy’s perceived fairness. Pursuing climate action within a multilateral setting does not only promise improved policy impacts, but may also generate higher levels of public support. Preregistration: This study has been pre-registered at AEA RCT Registry under #AEARCTR-0004090.

Economic growth, greenhouse gas emissions, and voting behavior: Any evidence of political decoupling?

“…In line with expectations and findings that citizens should dislike the costs associated with climate change mitigation policy (Armingeon and Bürgisser 2021;Bechtel et al 2022;Umit and Schaffer 2020), various studies build on the notion that governments are constrained in implementing ambitious climate policy because they would be punished at the polls (Finnegan 2022;Fankhauser et al 2015). According to Finnegan (2022), governments exposed to intense electoral competition, such as it uses to be the case in majoritarian electoral systems, are less likely to implement ambitious climate policies that are costly for voters because they fear to lose votes in the next elections.…”

Public Perceptions of Climate Mitigation Policies

“…Support for collective action: A vast majority of respondents think that climate change policy will be ef f ective only if most countries adopt measures to reduce carbon emissions, ranging from close to 60 percent in Japan to 80 percent in the United Kingdom (Figure 14). People might be more willing to adopt costly policies if other countries do so, both because the efforts of other countries make it more likely that policies will be effective and because those efforts resonate on fairness grounds (Bechtel, Genovese, and Scheve 2019;Bechtel, Scheve, and van Lieshout 2021). 15…”

Public Support for Climate Change Mitigation Policies: A Cross Country Survey

“…Not for Redistribution representative sample of U.S. adults. Bechtel et al (2019) and Bechtel et al (2021) show that support for climate policies depends on international coordination. We confirm many of these findings for a large sample of advanced and emerging market economies.…”