Responsibility, risk and climate policy support

In democracies, public support for climate policies can influence governments’ willingness to decarbonise economic production. The relevance of public opinion for climate policies has sparked rich research on this subject. On the one side, research in political science shows that labour market risk associated with climate policies can dampen workers’ support for climate policies. On the other side, research in environmental psychology finds that personal norms motivate pro-environmental action. Surprisingly, these findings from these two parallel literatures remain largely unintegrated. This study seeks to fill this gap by offering a perspective that connects labour market risk, personal norms and public support for climate policies. Using micro-level data from the European Social Survey (Round 8) and sectoral emissions data from Eurostat, I find that workers in sectors with higher CO2 emissions, which proxy for labour market risk from climate policies, have lower personal responsibility to tackle climate change. I also find that higher sectoral CO2 emissions dampen the positive association between personal responsibility and support for taxes on fossil fuels, but not for subsidies on renewable energy. These findings suggest that integrating currently standalone findings from these two parallel literatures can enrich our understanding of public opinion on climate policies.