Public Opinion and the Environment in Global Context

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Individuals experience the effects of the environment on their everyday lives and economic livelihoods. How do these experiences contribute to their beliefs about the environment and its impact on their personal welfare? Does vulnerability to climate change influence mass attitudes toward environmental policy, both national and international? What political actors (if any) do individuals hold accountable for preserving the environment, and who do they blame during periods of bad weather or for poor air and water quality? What other actors have the power to shape public opinion on these environmental issues? The answers to these questions are crucial for understanding the determinants of political mobilization on the environment at the local, national, and international level.

This panel aims to address these questions by providing theoretical explanations and comparative empirical evidence from across the global economic and political spectrum. To begin, Dolan and Nguyen analyze patterns in cross-national public opinion data, highlighting differences between advanced industrialized and developing countries. Our next two papers present original survey evidence from the world’s three most populous countries --- China, India, and the United States. Jin, Harish, Maliniak, and Parajon investigate how air quality affects Chinese citizens’ demands for environmental regulation and willingness to engage in collective action; Gaikwad, Genovese, and Tingley field paired survey experiments in India and the U.S. to test how variation in climate vulnerability affects preferences on climate change policy in two socio-economically different countries with similar electoral institutions. Finally, Stokes leverages the U.S. state politics of Texas to illustrate how non-governmental organizations can play a role in shaping public opinion on the environment.

Taken together, the four papers offer a global perspective on how individuals react to the environment in their political opinions and explore how these relationships do and do not vary across societies with different political institutions and economic structures. Our discussion highlights the important role of domestic public opinion in shaping the incentives for governments to enact environmental policy and cooperate at the global level on climate change.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 16: International Political Economy

Individual Presentations

• Climate Change and Political Blame - Lindsay R. Dolan, Wesleyan University; Quynh Nguyen, Australian National University

• Seeing is Believing? The Role of a Dirty Sky on Public Environmental Opinions - Yana Jin, College of William and Mary; Harish S.P., College of William & Mary; Daniel Maliniak, College of William & Mary; Eric James Parajon, College of William and Mary

• Climatic Vulnerability, Compensation Mechanisms, and Support for Climate Policy - Nikhar Gaikwad, Columbia University; Federica Genovese, University of Essex; Dustin Halliday Tingley, Harvard University

• How Foundations Can Change Policy: The Energy Foundation’s Role in Texas - Leah Stokes, UCSB

Discussants

• Meir Alkon Princeton University

• Alicia Dailey Cooperman Princeton University