Can the court bridge the gap? Public perception of economic vs. generational inequality in climate change mitigation policies.

Between-subjects survey experiment with vignettes, in which respondents are primed to consider economic vs. generational inequality concerns relating to climate change mitigation policies.

2022-11-10

2022-12-05

After the survey experiment, respondents are first asked: ”Do you support such a carbon taxation
policy?”. This is on a Likert-scale from 1 (”Do not agree at all”) to 5 (”Fully agree”). In order
to check whether respondents’ disagreement with the policy might be due to it not aiding enough
in climate change mitigation, we additionally ask respondents: ”Do you think the suggested CO2
taxation is:” with the answer options ”Too high”, ”exactly right”, ”too low”, and lastly ”Don’t
know”

We implemented a 2*4 between-subject experiment research design. Each
group of respondents was shown an information treatment consisting of three main parts: 1) an introduction text about a current climate change mitigation policy in Germany, 2) a randomisation into an elite-cue treatment group (vs. control group with no extra information), 3) a randomisation into one of 4 treatment groups (3 inequality treatment groups and one control group).

Randomisation by computer.

Randomization at the individual level.

No

Estimated to be 6000 individuals.

6000 individuals.

6000 individuals.

Power analyses based on results from quantitative pretest Hypothesis 1: Respondents are less likely to support the Co2 policy if they receive the economic treatment, as compared to the control group. Power analyses based on pretests of our study design show that we can detect a change of half a point on our answer scale between framing groups with a power of 100% at the conventional statistical significance level of 5% and 1%. Hypothesis 2: Respondents are more likely to support the Co2 policy if they receive the generational treatment, as compared to the control group. Power analyses for this hypothesis shows that we can detect a change of half a point on our answer scale between framing groups with a power of 20% at the conventional statistical significance level of 5%. Hypothesis 3: Respondents are less likely to support the Co2 policy if they receive the economic treatment, as compared to the generational treatment. Power analyses for H3 shows that we can detect a change of half a point on our answer scale between framing groups with a power of 99.8% (95.3%) at the conventional statistical significance level of 5% (and 1%). Order effect hypotheses: Hypothesis 4: Respondents are more likely to support the Co2 policy if they receive the generational treatment, as compared to the mixed treatment group. Power analyses for H4 shows that we can detect a change of half a point on our answer scale between framing groups with a power of 99.9% at the conventional statistical significance level of 5%. Hypothesis 5: Respondents are less likely to support the Co2 policy if they receive the economic treatment, as compared to the mixed treatment group. Power analyses for H5 shows that we can detect a change of half a point on our answer scale between framing groups with a power of 13.3% at the conventional statistical significance level of 5%. Hypothesis 6: There is an order effect in whether respondents see the economic or the generational treatment first. Power analyses for H5 shows that we can detect a change of half a point on our answer scale between framing groups with a power of 5.2% at the conventional statistical significance level of 5%. Court treatment hypothesis: Hypothesis 7: Respondents are less likely to support the Co2 policy if they receive the court treatment, as compared to the control group. Power analyses for H7 shows that we can detect a change of half a point on our answer scale between framing groups with a power of 100% at the conventional statistical significance level of 5% and 1%. See documentation for full information and results from the power analyses.