Simple re-framing unlikely to boost public support for climate policy

Abstract

Ambitious policies for limiting climate change require strong public support. But the public’s appetite for such policies, as currently observed in most countries, is rather limited. One possibility for enhancing public support could be to shift the main justification in the public policy discourse on greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation from benefits of reducing climate change risks (the conventional justification) to other types of benefits. Technological innovation and green jobs, community building, and health benefits are widely discussed candidates. The intuition is that re-framing GHG mitigation efforts and their benefits in such terms could make them more personally relevant and more emotionally engaging and appealing to citizens. However, based on results from two survey embedded experiments (combined N=1664), and in contrast to some earlier studies, we conclude that simple re-framing of climate policy is unlikely to increase public support, and outline reasons for this finding. As the added value of other justifications remains unclear at best and potentially nil, sticking to climate risk reduction as the dominant justification seems worthwhile.