Interest Groups and Support for Environmental Policy

Do the public strategies of interest groups affect voters’ policy positions? Special interest groups can use two broad influence strategies: (1) inside lobbying strategies aimed at directly seeking access to politicians and providing information, and (2) outside lobbying strategies via public communication, information campaigns, demonstrations, rallies, and public statements. In this study focuses on the public communication strategies of interest groups and coalitions vis-a-vis voters, and whether these strategies serve to move voter’s preferences. We present subjects with two environmental policy proposals and then confront individuals with the outside strategies of environmental interest groups and coalitions supporting these policies. We concentrate on environmental policies due to the clear distributional consequences and the current state of discussion of the climate transition in Germany and across Europe. We thus hold constant the type of group, the type of support, and vary instead the strategy, messenger type, and policies. Thus, we vary 4 Dimensions in the experiment