On the nexus between material and ideological determinants of climate policy support
通过随机实验操纵四种气候政策的消费成本，研究1,597名瑞典成年人中左右翼对政策支持的分化，发现高成本加剧极化，右翼更敏感且可能因动机性不信任降低对消费气候后果的担忧。
This study explores how rising economic costs of climate mitigation policies differentially shape climate policy support among the political left and right. To this end, we randomly manipulate how much consumption costs increase as a result of four different climate mitigation policies and study how different cost scenarios influence policy support among a sample of 1,597 Swedish adults. We find that more costly climate policies induce greater climate policy polarization, since right-leaning participants display both lower baseline and more cost-sensitive climate policy support. In addition, we investigate how policy costs affect participants’ concerns about the climatic consequences of consumption. While inconclusive, the results indicate that right-leaning participants, in some instances, display less concern about the climatic consequences of consumption when policy costs rise. This pattern can be understood through the lens of motivated disbelief, which holds that people adjust their beliefs in order to support their preferred actions. The present study provides novel insights as to how and when material conditions influence climate policy preferences.