The most important factor to gain support for climate policies
On the psychology behind what makes people support different climate solutions.
Welcome back to Climate Psyched, the newsletter where we explore all things psychological, behavioral and emotional related to the climate and ecosystem crises.
The other week I got into a discussion that I’ve had quite a few times in various forms over the years, on whether people actually want real climate action and progressive climate politics or not. Even if survey after survey show that there’s a strong support for more climate politics, are people really willing to do what it takes, or is it merely easy to support climate politics in general, but then oppose the more specific climate policies? Part of the answer has to do with the psychology behind how we interpret different information: the design of both survey questions and climate policies can both increase and decrease people’s support and willingness to act. There’s especially one factor that seems more important than everything else. Let’s dig into this month’s post!
Situation
In April, the 89 Percent Project launched. It’s a global media collaboration that wants to highlight how the vast majority across the globe want more climate action from their government. The project builds on numerous surveys and studies that all show the same thing: people are concerned about the climate crisis and they want more, not less, action!
But in addition to this, there are still several reports showing people’s unwillingness to take action themselves. Like the Sustainability and Consumer Finances Survey (the SUSY monitor), conducted in Sweden, which at the same time show a strong support for the the government to do more to combat climate change, yet low willingness to make personal trade-offs to contribute to tackling the climate crisis.
This might seem contradicting, or at least like people just want someone else to fix the problem, without contributing themselves. But looking closer at the psychology behind the survey questions we can see how the framing of information and design of proposed solutions affect people’s support.
Explanation
In the SUSY monitor, participant’s were asked about to what extent they agreed with the following statements:
I am willing to pay higher fees for sustainable investments
and
I am willing to accept a lower pension if I know my pension is invested sustainably
The results showed that the vast majority disagreed with both statements. But let’s break down the psychology that comes into play here: These two statements are both framed in a way that risks triggering people’s loss aversion, i.e. the tendency to perceive losses as very costly, and hence, when information highlights sacrifices and costs, become less prone to make changes . This is connected to how people’s choices are influenced by how information is framed. In short: people tend to be more keen to avoid losses than take risks to gain wins. When a proposed solution highlights costs we become more averse to it. Only 11% of the survey respondents agreed that sustainable investments lead to a higher returns.
But! A loss for me might be a gain for the planet?
That’s what the statements try to investigate: what personal trade-offs are people willing to make? The problem is that they’re framed in a way that make the consequences of one’s actions - i.e. what the behavior (paying a higher fee or accepting a lower pension) will lead to - quite vague and temporally placed in a distant future. How do you actually know that those sustainable investment will lead to something good? What concretely will come out of it? Consequences that are vague and temporally distant will generally be less motivating. High risk, very uncertain reward.
This is also related to the perceived response efficacy of the actions. Framing something as a personal trade-off, where you individually sacrifice your own money to do something that maybe will lead to something somewhere in the far distance will probably lead to a low response efficacy, i.e. the belief that your actions will have the desired effect. In this case, the survey respondents will probably doubt whether accepting a lower pension will really make a difference at all.
In addition to this, the framing of the statements are individualizing a collective problem and placing the proposed solution (i.e. pay more for sustainable investments) in the hands of the individual, without putting into context what others might do. What if I accept a lower pension, but others don’t? This also risks reducing people’s willingness to act. Relying on voluntary, individual action seems to work fairly well for getting people to do low impact stuff, like not littering (which does very little to tackle the climate crisis), but is less effective for more high impact behaviors.
Another risk of individualizing climate action is that it feels unfair when you’re taking action yourself, but not seeing others doing the same. Several studies have shown that perceiving climate action and climate policies as unjust, or as something “I’m supposed to do, but no one else seems to be doing it” reduces support. People generally like justice and they want climate policies and climate action to be just, and something that we all chip into. In fact, fairness seems to be the most important factor to gain support for climate policies.
Fairness is essential to gain support for climate policy
In a recent experimental study, psychology researcher Magnus Bergquist, demonstrate how high costs, ineffectiveness, and unfairness affect support for different environmental taxes: meat tax, plastic tax and carbon tax, across three different cultures: USA, UK and India.
Across four different experiments he could see that perceived unfairness - especially when the tax was proposed to be distributed in an unfair way that would make poor people pay disproportionally much, compared to richer groups and corporations - not only limited support for the proposed climate taxes, it also made the participants perceive the taxes as less effective and lowered their trust in policymakers.
Since they’re measuring different things, there’s really no contradiction between being unwilling to make a personal trade-off that emphasizes personal risk, offers vague potential gains and low response efficacy, and supporting brave climate policies that seem fair and effective. But what we can learn from these different studies and surveys is that framing matters, policy design matters and perceived fairness matters a lot.
Action
Climate policies have a higher chance of gaining support if they’re designed in a way that’s perceived as fair, which should be taken into account when designing different policies.
Always be aware of how information about climate, climate action and climate policy is framed: when costs and sacrifices are emphasized, people tend to become loss averse and less willing to make changes. Instead, highlight the gains, for example: “Would you be willing to contribute financially to sustainable investments that would lead to cleaner air, better crops and a more stable economy?”
Instead of individualizing climate action, collectivize it! Remember that people are more likely to take action if they know that many others are taking action, or that everyone’s bound to chip in. For example: “Would you be willing to join the 73% who are willing to contribute to sustainable investments that will lead to cleaner air, better crops and a more stable economy?” (note that this is a hypothetical example of framing)
Fairness doesn’t mean that everyone does exactly the same, but rather that those with much resources do and pay more. Make this distributional fairness as transparent as possible.
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