How robust is public support for unilateral climate policy?

Bernauer, Thomas; Gampfer, Robert

doi:10.1016/j.envsci.2015.07.010

Cited by 54 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…The distribution of responses in China is thus similar to those found for India by Bernauer and Gampfer (2015), with very low support for not reducing GHG emissions at all and similar levels of support for unilateral climate policy across treatment and control conditions. A key difference, however, is the nature of reciprocity preferences exhibited between the two samples.…”

Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 49%

“…Using a framing experiment embedded in a population based survey in the United States and India, Bernauer and Gampfer (2015) found that mass public support for unilateral climate policy was stronger than expected. Or, conversely, citizens appear to be surprisingly non-reciprocal, relative to what government rhetoric in climate negotiations would suggest.…”

Section: Argumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This rhetoric and its legal and organizational reflection in the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol process is somewhat at odds with the many local, national, and regional climate policy initiatives, which are predominantly non-reciprocal, that is unilateral and not explicitly contingent on what other political units (notably, countries) do. Moreover, information from the very few surveys that have examined citizens' attitudes towards unilateral vs reciprocal climate policy (Bernauer & Gampfer, 2015;World Bank, 2010) observe rather high levels of support for unilateral climate policy.…”

Section: Argumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Unilateral or Reciprocal Climate Policy? Experimental Evidence from China

Bernauer

Dong

McGrath

et al. 2016

PaG

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The traditional political economy account of global climate change governance directs our attention to fundamental collective action problems associated with global public goods provision, resulting from positive or negative externalities as well as freeriding. The governance architecture of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol uses the traditional approaches of international diplomacy for addressing such challenges: legally binding commitments based on principles of reciprocity and (fair) cost/burden sharing via formalized carbon-budgeting. Yet, the 2015 Paris Agreement has essentially abandoned this approach, as it now operates on the basis of internationally coordinated and monitored unilateralism. On the presumption that public opinion matters for government policy, we examine how citizens view this shift in climate policy from reciprocity to unilateralism, after many years of exposure to strong reciprocity rhetoric by governments and stakeholders. To that end, we fielded a survey experiment in China, the world's largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter. The results show that there is, perhaps surprisingly, strong and robust public support for unilateral, non-reciprocal climate policy. To the extent China is interested in pushing ahead with ambitious and thus costly GHG reduction policies, our results suggest that China can leverage segments of public support in order to overcome domestic obstacles to GHG mitigation policies.

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Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 49%

Section: Argumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Argumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Unilateral or Reciprocal Climate Policy? Experimental Evidence from China

Bernauer

Dong

McGrath

et al. 2016

PaG

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Which of the following statements comes closest to your own point of view? The United States should reduce its greenhouse gas emissions… The large and consistent support for unilateral domestic climate policy found in the literature (Bernauer and Gamfer, 2015;Borick et al, 2015;Leiserowitz et al, 2015) (and confirmed here) suggests that climate change is not a collective action problem in the American mind. Unconditional support for climate policies has also been reported in other developed and developing countries (Tingley and Tomz, ARTICLE PALGRAVE COMMUNICATIONS | DOI: 10.1057/palcomms.2016.56 2014).…”

Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 48%

“…The support for unilateral climate action in our sample corresponds to previous reports and actual legislation (Bernauer and Gamfer, 2015;Leiserowitz et al, 2015;Nachmany et al, 2015). However, we dig a bit deeper to find that the reasons for acting alone lie outside the standard collective action framework.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The prospects for Paris: behavioral insights into unconditional cooperation on climate change

McEvoy

Cherry

2016

Palgrave Commun

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Recent survey evidence from the United States suggests that most Americans support domestic policies to address climate change, and this support is not conditional on other countries' commitment levels. The finding is somewhat perplexing because climate change is by definition a collective problem that requires a collective response. However, the question of why Americans support unconditional climate initiatives has not been addressed. We present survey evidence that shows a willingness to act alone is not the result of misunderstanding the collective nature of the climate problem, but rather people are driven by notions of responsibility, morality and global leadership.

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How strong is public support for unilateral climate policy and what drives it?

McGrath

Bernauer

2017

WIREs Climate Change

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Conventional wisdom holds that climate change poses a global public goods problem, thus requiring a global solution that reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions worldwide through some form of centralized target setting and burden-sharing arrangement among countries. Yet, the 2015 Paris Agreement has essentially given up on this approach, on which the 1997 Kyoto Protocol was based, and now relies on policies that are adopted unilaterally and voluntarily by individual countries. Since ambitious climate policies are very unlikely to be enacted and effectively implemented without strong public support, research is beginning to explore how strong public support is for unilateral climate policy and what its determinants are. Recent research has developed useful survey instruments to gauge public support for unilateral climate policy. Results from surveys and survey-embedded experiments show that when respondents are confronted with cost implications and free-riding problems associated with unilateral climate policy, public support tends to drop to some extent, but still remains quite high. Current research thus shows that people are-the hitherto strong global public goods framing of climate policy notwithstandingsurprisingly nonreciprocal in their climate policy preferences. Preferences concerning climate policy tend to be driven primarily by a range of personal predispositions and cost considerations, which existing research has already explored quite extensively, rather than by considerations of what other countries do.

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How robust is public support for unilateral climate policy?

Cited by 54 publications

References 36 publications

Unilateral or Reciprocal Climate Policy? Experimental Evidence from China

Unilateral or Reciprocal Climate Policy? Experimental Evidence from China

The prospects for Paris: behavioral insights into unconditional cooperation on climate change

How strong is public support for unilateral climate policy and what drives it?

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