Social Welfare Generosity and Public Opinion about Climate Change

Research on attitudes about the environment in Europe and the United States has shown the environment to be a "fair weather friend." Concern about environmental problems tends to grow when economic conditions are good, and fall when they are bad. There is evidence that this effect on opinion shows up not only in terms of policy priority given to environmental matters, but also about belief in “facts”. For example, the percentage of people believing that the earth is warming falls when the economy is bad.

The source of these changes in beliefs is not well understood. One obvious argument is that people carry a strong belief that environmental policies hurt the economy. Personal economic vulnerability (or a sociotropic concern about other’s vulnerability) may also motivate people to change their mind about the environment. In this paper, we ask whether the level of social protection in a society plays a role in people’s propensity to change their attitudes and beliefs about environmental problems (specifically climate change) in the face of adverse economic shocks. Our working hypothesis is that more generous welfare state provisions make people not only more likely to believe that climate change is occurring and that addressing climate change is a policy priority, but less likely to change their environmental beliefs in the face of adverse economic shocks. We use data from Eurobarometer surveys, American General Social Surveys, and the International Social Survey Project to evaluate this claim.