Explaining Perceptions of Climate Change in the US

• Florence School of Transnational Governance
• EUI Climate Workshop
• STG Climate

Pro-environmental individual actions and support for policy: evidence from the U.S.

The March edition of the EUI Climate Workshop features a presentation by Chiara Binelli (Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Bologna) and Matthew Loveless (Research Fellow at the EUI Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies; Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Bologna) of their recent publication titled Explaining Perceptions of Climate Change in the US. 

Building on previous research, the authors use online randomized experiments to investigate which type of information on local climate change, and through which mechanism can override Americans‘ partisanship divide on intentions to take individual pro-environmental actions and support climate policies. They find that while providing prospective rather than retrospective information on local climate change affects individuals across party lines, the effectiveness of this information provision is significantly dependent on the assignment of responsibility for addressing climate change. The authors explore this new dimension of responsibility that carries salient implications for both the US and an increasingly polarized Europe.