Elites Can Induce Renewable Energy Behavior without Increasing Climate Belief

• In Event: Politics of the Energy Transition

Abstract

How can elected officials shift Americans' attitudes toward renewable energy and climate change? When officials are unable to increase belief in climate change, can they still induce climate-friendly behaviors such as installing solar panels or driving electric vehicles (EVs)? Using two preregistered survey experiments (n = 9,298 and n = 9,903), I test various pro-solar and pro-EV messages from co-partisan elites. I compare how climate cues and costly action cues affect attitudes toward solar panels and community solar (Study 1), electric vehicles and low-carbon transportation (Study 2), and anthropogenic climate change (Study 1 and 2). Consistent with prior research on the influence of elite cues, every treatment significantly increased the pooled sample's likelihood of installing solar panels or driving electric vehicles. Climate cues were never less effective than other cues for Republicans — despite previous research on motivated reasoning and partisan polarization on the environment. On the other hand, none of the treatments increased belief in climate change for Republicans or Democrats. Optimistically, this combination of results suggests that co-partisan elites can motivate climate-friendly behaviors even without dispelling climate skepticism. Attitudes toward renewable energy may not yet be irreversibly entangled with the issue of climate change. Additionally, I use costly action cues to test if partisan elites become more persuasive when they themselves engage in the behavior they are promoting; contrary to my preregistered hypothesis, I find little evidence of this. I thus contribute to the literature on political communication by applying the theory of credibility-enhancing displays (CREDs) to politics.

Author

• Victor Yuhang Wu, Stanford University