Pollution and the public: how information accessibility conditions the public’s responsiveness to policy and outcomes

Abstract

This article advances a theory that brings real-world outcomes into our current understanding of the dynamic relationship between public opinion and policy. It examines a vital public good – air pollution remediation in 319 American localities – and estimates a dynamic model of relationships among three key variables: public opinion, policy, and air pollution outcomes. The analysis focuses on both public opinion and air pollution outcomes as dependent variables. I find that public opinion reacts to changes in statewide policy and local air pollution, which suggests the public forms its opinions with whatever reliable information is most readily available. I also find that local public opinion’s impact on local air pollution is substantively meaningful on timescales smaller than 5 years, indicating that the additional policy effort prompted by public opinion change is sufficient to yield tangible real-world outcomes even in the short term.

(Mis)Informing the public? The public's responsiveness to reliable and unreliable information in illiberal information environments

“…Studies in democratic political systems have shown that policy change has a robust statistical effect on the public's preferences in salient issue domains (Jennings 2009; Wlezien 1995), which reflects the public using reasonably accurate information about policy itself. The public also updates its opinions with outcomes information that is easy to obtain and interpret (Ansolabehere, Meredith, and Snowberg 2014; Buchanan 2022; Egan and Mullin 2012).…”