The effect of climate news on climate policy support

We run online surveys in Germany. We recruit participants through a professional survey company (Bilendi). To be eligible subjects must be adults (age 18+). The sample will use quotas for age brackets, gender and eduction (with and without a highschool diploma 'Abitur') to match the distribution in the general population.

2024-01-25

2024-02-05

Pre-treatment attitudes towards climate change and trust in climate scientists (we distinguish between those researching the natural phenomenon of climate change and those researching climate policy).
Post-treatment hypothetical support for specific climate policies (ban of combustion engine cares, level of domestic carbon price in 2025, and year by which Germany should be carbon neutral). Participants are informed that summary statistics of these questions will be forwarded to the committee of the Federal Parliament (Bundestag) responsible for climate policy.
Post-treatment consequential choices (donation to WWF and vote for the purchase of permanent retirement of emission rights)

To identify channels of transmission, we measure the extent to which participants perceive information as good or bad news and the emotions invoked when reading the information.
We are also interested in the heterogeneity of the background characteristics of respondents and will thus look at outcomes by sub-groups as defined by income, age, gender, political affiliation, education level and employment status.

All subjects answers questions about demographics and prior beliefs and attitudes towards climate change, climate policy and climate science.
In the treatment groups, subjects receive a "good” or “bad” news from climate science on (i) climate sensitivity, (ii) effectiveness of climate policies or (iii) plausibility of temperature targets.
Those subjects receiving information also indicate whether they perceive the news as "positive" or "negative", how they feel when they read the news and they are asked to write down briefly how they would explain the news to a friend.
There are two control groups. One control group does not receive any additional information, the other receive some climate information without reference to the future and without a clear positive or negative connotation.
All subjects then answer questions about their support for specific climate policies (ban on new cars running on gasoline or diesel, the preferred level of the domestic carbon price in Germany in 2025, and the preferred date of carbon neutrality in Germany) as well as questions about their family composition, income and political attutudes.
Respondents make two decisions that have real consequences.
First, they are informed that they have been automatically enrolled in a lottery to win 10 euors. The probability of winning is one in ten. Before they know whether they have won or not, they need to commit to donating none of it, part of it, or all of it to the climate campaign of the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature). We use the amount respondents wish to donate as (real) measure of support for action to mitigate climate change.
Second, subjects within each treatment vote on whether they will collectively contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 10 tons of CO2. The reduction in emissions is achieved through the purchase and permanent retirement of emission rights worth 10 tons of CO2 from the European Union Emissions Trading System. The purchase and retirement of emission rights is carried out by the non-profit organization ForTomorrow. If the majority of participants vote in favor of the purchase and retirement of emission allowances, the proposal is implemented. In this case, all participants in the survey receive a copy of the certificate confirming that 10 emission allowances have been definitively retired. However, if the majority of participants vote against the purchase and retirement of emission allowances, no emission allowances are retired and all participants are credited with additional panel points worth 1 euro.

Hypotheses:

Hp1: Providing ``bad (good) news'' about climate change/policy strengthens (weakens) support for ambitious climate policies.

Hp2: Participants with a higher trust in the respective branch of climate science (elicited ex ante) respond more to treatments.

Hp3: The clearer participants attribute information to the good/bad news categories, and the stronger their emotional response, the stronger are treatment effects.

The randomization into treatments is done by the survey company.
The randomization of winners of the lottery (one of the primary outcome variables) is done by the researchers after completion of data collection.

We randomize individual participants in two control and six treatment groups. All groups have the same a priori probability.

No

1 country, Germany

8,000 individuals

1,000 individuals for each experimental condition (two control and six treatment conditions)