Public opinion and environmental policy output: a cross-national analysis of energy policies in Europe

Abstract

This article studies how public opinion is associated with the introduction of renewable energy policies in Europe. While research increasingly seeks to model the link between public opinion and environmental policies, the empirical evidence is largely based on a single case: the US. This limits the generalizability of findings and we argue accordingly for a systematic, quantitative study of how public opinion drives environmental policies in another context. Theoretically, we combine arguments behind the political survival of democratic leaders with electoral success and environmental politics. Ultimately, we suggest that office-seeking leaders introduce policies that seem favorable to the domestic audience; if the public prefers environmental protection, the government introduces such policies in turn. The main contribution of this research is the cross-country empirical analysis, where we combine data on the public's environmental attitudes and renewable energy policy outputs in a European context between 1974 and 2015. We show that as public opinion shifts towards prioritizing the environment, there is a significant and positive effect on the rate of renewable energy policy outputs by governments in Europe. To our knowledge, this is the first systematic, quantitative study of public opinion and environmental policies across a large set of countries, and we demonstrate that the mechanisms behind the introduction of renewable energy policies follow major trends across European states.

The domestic politics of international climate commitments: which factors explain cross-country variation in NDC ambition?

“…On a global scale, Weaver (2008) establishes a direct link between support for environmental policies and the ambition level of environmental policies in an analysis of 64 countries. Finally, Anderson et al (2017) find that shifts in public attitudes toward pro-environmentalism lead to increases in renewable energy policies in Europe over the period 1974-2015.…”

“…Climate policy literature has evaluated the effect of various public opinion variables on the emergence of policies. Much of this research has focused on the United States (Anderson et al 2017). Agnone (2007), for example, finds that pro-environmental attitudes has a positive effect on the enactment of federal environmental legislation in the United States over the period , and that the effect is amplified by protests.…”

“…In democracies, voters are generally free to articulate their policy preferences through designated channels of public opinion such as the media, demonstrations, interest groups and debates, and politicians are incentivized to translate voters' preferences into policy in order to win elections. One model of the relationship between policy responsiveness and public opinion hence suggests that both office-holding and officeseeking politicians will try to appeal to the median voter's policy preferences (Downs 1957, Anderson et al 2017, Beiser-McGrath and Bernauer 2019. If so, we can expect that policymakers will strive to generate climate policy that is broadly in line with the general public opinion, as represented by the median voter, on climate change.…”

Online Public Opinion Guidance Strategy for College Students in the Era of We Media

“…With accurate and timely monitoring of the information, we can find out the public opinion in time at the beginning of the occurrence of public opinion, give positive response, explain and explain, and prevent mistransmission. In the process of expansion of public opinion, in order to focus the content as the center, planning topics, propaganda guidance through the multiple platforms and online interaction, collect understand the opinions of the students thinking, to reflect the problem to be solved quickly feedback to each relevant department and respond quickly released the most authoritative information, promote public opinion with network public opinion monitoring mechanism precision work efficiency [30] [31] [32] [33].…”

Conserving Antarctic biodiversity in the Anthropocene

“…For example, one study found that education and experience led to increased understanding of threats facing the region (climate change, human activity), and indeed, over 60% of surveyed tourists supported the implementation of a conservation tax for Antarctic visitors (Vila et al 2016). Policy change is primarily driven through public awareness and pressure (Anderson et al 2017), and an increasing number of visitors, and associated increase in public awareness will only help to fuel this support.…”