Local support of climate change policies is driven by spatial diffusion

Abstract

Political conflicts about energy and climate change policies have often 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 periods of time. We find that local support for climate policies varies by up to 60 percentage points across German counties. 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 detect 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.