Climate Change Attitudes in Oil-Dependent Economies

Just as in Dechezleprêtre et al. (2022), we run an online survey. We recruit participants through a professional survey company ensuring that our sample is representative by gender, age and location, in fossil fuel rich and poor regions in Russia and random treat them with either pedagogical or public official endorsement videos. To be eligible, subjects must be adults (age 18+) and must be Russian citizens.

Just as Dechezleprêtre et al. (2022), participants will be asked to answer questions on their socio-economic background (gender, age, education, household income etc.). Then, respondents will be asked to answer questions about the financial situation of their household and their energy consumption. Then they are asked to write an essay on climate change and subsequently, are randomly assigned to one out of the 5 treatment or the control group. In the treatment group, respondents will see one of five videos ( 2 are adjusted from the original study and 3 are additionally created). The videos adjusted from the original study provide information on the expected effects of climate change and on policy options that can help mitigate climate change. The three videos which have additionally been added by us provide information on various aspects of the 2023 Presidential Decree, which outlines the government’s official stance on climate change. In particular, one video confirms the existence of climate change, one video confirms the need to implement policies to fight climate change and one video confirms the need for international cooperation to address climate change. The treatment will be followed by blocks of questions on different question related to beliefs regarding climate change, climate change mitigation policies, and views on international burden-sharing of costs to address climate change.

2024-12-30

2025-03-26

We are interested in people's view on and understanding of climate change, as well as support for and views on climate mitigation policies, and their willingness to share the burden to address climate change.

Just as in Dechezleprêtre et al. (2022), we will use a lot the raw answers to the policy knowledge and perception questions in the analysis, but we will also construct various indexes that summarise the participants knowledge and views.

We are interested in the heterogeneity generated by whether individuals are located in fossil fuel poor or fossil fuel rich regions as well as people's response to the treatment videos.

We are also interested in trust towards scientific results.

We have identified the top 10 regions in Russia to be rich in fossil fuels: Tyumen Oblast, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Kemerovo Oblast, Republic of Tatarstan, Irkutsk Oblast, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Sacha Republic, Sakhalin Oblast and Orenburg Oblast.

We are in particular interested in different scientific fields, differentiating between economists, geophysicist and climatologists.

We randomize the information provided to respondents, with 5 out of 6 respondents being assigned to one of the treatment videos, while 1 out of 6 individuals is assigned to the control group.

De facto, the six different treatment arms (five different videos and a control) are treated as separate surveys. Within these six versions of the survey, we also randomize the order of one specific question regarding trust in different scientific disciplines (economists, geophysicists, and climatologists).

The task of collecting information from a sample of Russians is outsourced to Yandex. Yandex is a Russian multinational technology company best known for its search engine, which holds a dominant market share in Russia. Through cooperators and subcontractors, Yandex has access to a large pool of registered individuals in Russia who are willing to participate in surveys. "Registered" implies that individuals have created an account with Yandex or its affiliated platforms, and that basic information such as age, gender, and location is known to Yandex. Participation is based on interest in the topic and satisfaction of necessary requirements. In our case, participants must not only agree to take part but also confirm that they are at least 18 years old. Small rewards are provided for participation.

We agreed that, in the first step, respondents would be screened to ensure that the final sample is representative of both fossil fuel and non-fossil fuel regions, considering gender, age, and area of residence (urban versus rural). While the survey is ongoing, software monitors demographics and response rates, dynamically adjusting participant selection to maintain balance.

In the moment when individuals give their consent to participate, random number generator algorithms (which assign unique identifiers to participants) are used to randomly assign one of the treatment arms to participants. This ensures that the assignment of treatments is truly random.

As mentioned above, the randomization is provided by random number generator algorithms by the surveying company.

Randomization is at the unit of individuals.

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Up to 2400 individuals

Four hundred individuals will be in the control group, while each of the five different videos (5 different treatments) will be shown to a group of 400 individuals.