Causes of Changes in Climate Change Public Opinion and Political Behaviour

• Department of Political and Social Sciences

PhD thesis defence by Susanna Garside

Does exposure to climate-related natural disasters increase awareness about climate change and support for Green political parties? Can educational interventions play a role in harnessing support for costly climate policies? To answer these questions, this dissertation uses observational and experimental methods for causal inference, drawing on data from three advanced democracies: Germany, the United States, and France. The first empirical chapter (co-authored with Haoyu Zhai) studies the electoral effects of the 2021 Germany floods on voter support for the Green Party in a federal election occurring two months after the disaster. We find that voters living in affected municipalities were marginally (0.4-1.6 percentage points) more likely to vote for the Greens. In the second empirical chapter, I use internet search data from the United States to explore whether major climate disasters spur increased public attention to climate change. I find that affected areas experience increased search interest for climate change for up to three months after the onset of a major disaster, with the effects driven particularly by places with the highest incomes and education levels. The third empirical chapter (co-authored with Max Bradley, Rens Chazottes and Nina Lopez-Uroz) turns to the question of whether educational interventions can stimulate support for costly climate policies. We evaluate the impacts of a real-world educational climate workshop in French universities and find that workshop participation increased policy support by 8-12 percentage points, with effects persisting for at least six weeks. Interestingly, the treatment effect on policy support is not weaker for participants who would incur higher personal costs. Overall, this dissertation demonstrates the value of a nuanced understanding of how experiences of climate change impact public opinion and political behaviour. The fact that the public increasingly associate extreme weather events with climate change is an important achievement for scientists who have been sounding the alarm for decades. However, disaster exposure is not generating the kinds of radical public reactions needed to pressure political elites into making impactful mitigation and adaptation policy changes. This dissertation furthers our understanding of citizens’ heterogeneous responses to climate change experiences, and identifies education as both a key moderating factor and catalyst for change.

Susanna Garside is a final-year PhD candidate at the Department of Political and Social Sciences. Prior to joining the EUI, she worked for the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ) in Uganda and completed a Master’s degree at the College of Europe in Bruges. From September, she will continue her research on the politics of climate change as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford.