Social Construction and Climate Policy Tool Preferences: A Survey Experiment

• In Event: Policy Designs and Target Populations

Abstract

Climate change policy responses wrestle with identifying who should bear the costs of mitigation and adaption. Policy debates often center on broad conceptions of who is responsible for taking action to address the climate challenges. But these debates to not explore the various groups or communities that may be impacted by new climate change policy responses. However, does the public change support for policy options if the benefits or costs of policy options are explicitly tied to particular groups or communities in the US? Using social construction of target populations as a framework, this paper reports the results of a national US public opinion survey. Using a survey experiment, we asked respondents to indicate support or opposition over a suite of climate change policy options, but varied who would be responsible for these options. This paper asks two primary questions: Does the framing of who benefits from, or who pays for climate change policy influence public support or opposition for policy adoption? Do these framings shift the other predictors of support for climate change policy adoption, such as ideology or ecological perspectives? We report on the findings from this survey effort and discuss the implications for climate change policy in the US.

Authors

• Chris Koski, Reed College

• Paul Manson, Reed College