Does right-wing populism undermine public support for environmental policies in Europe?

It has been argued that in addition to other political risks, the rise of right-wing populism (RWP) in Europe poses a significant threat to environmental objectives. In the present paper, we investigate whether different facets of RWP – populist attitudes, nationalism, nativism, and voting for RWP party – correlate with greater opposition to six different environmental policies in nine European countries. Our results indicate that nativism is consistently and strongly associated with opposition to most policies in the majority of countries. Nationalism, voting for RWP parties and populist attitudes are correlated with lower support for selected environmental policies and in some countries only. Furthermore, policy contents and framing also matters, as the four facets of RWP are positively associated with some policy attributes, yet negatively with others.