Anti-Reflexivity and Political Polarization on Support for Government Spending on Environmental Protection in the USA, 1974-2018

• In Event: 2251 - Section on Environmental Sociology Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 6. Environmental Attitudes and Perceptions 2

Abstract

Recent social science scholarship documents political polarization on environmental concern in the US general public since the early 1990s. Yet, such analyses typically speculate on the causes of such polarization. Our study utilizes insights from anti-reflexivity theory in sociology and party sorting theory in political science to explain why and how such political polarization has occurred, respectively. We argue that anti-reflexivity theory explains why the conservative movement heightened its anti-environmentalism in the early 1990s and that party sorting theory explains how Republican elites drove heightened anti-environmentalism among self-identified conservatives/Republicans in the US general public. We examine these arguments using four decades (1974-2018) of year-level data from conservative movement periodicals and Congressional voting records and individual-level data from the US General Social Survey. We perform multi-level modeling with random intercepts and random slopes to examine how our time-lagged year-level variables influence our individual level variables. Briefly, we find that a noticeable increase in anti-environmental articles in conservative movement periodicals preceded a heightened difference in League of Conservation Voters (LCV) environmental voting scores between Democrats and Republicans in the Senate and House. Further, this time-lagged LCV measure influences the random slopes of political orientation on support for spending on the environment at the individual level. In short, the anti-environmental mobilization of the US conservative movement decreased Congressional Republican support for environmental protection, which drove political polarization on support for environmental protection in the US public. These results support the key arguments of anti-reflexivity theory and party sorting theory, further demonstrating their explanatory power and increasing our scholarly understanding of how environmental protection has become highly polarized in the US. Importantly, it offers insights for examining the growing polarization over environmental issues observed in other nations such as the UK, Canada and Australia.

Authors

• Aaron M. McCright, Michigan State University

• Chenyang Xiao, American University

• Riley E. Dunlap, Oklahoma State University