Climate Action from Abroad: Assessing Mass Support for Cross-Border Climate Compensation

International climate finance is the system of transfer mechanisms from rich countries to Global South countries that seek to address issues of mitigation and adaptation to climate change. These resource transfers promise to play a central role in international efforts to combat climate change. Given the global and transnational nature of the climate problem, international climate finance has become a central point of international climate politics. This issue is embedded in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and has motivated multiple instruments of the Kyoto Protocol. Similar mechanisms have been established with the Paris Agreement. Along many years and more recently with the Paris Agreement pledges, developed democracies have committed themselves to international financial programs that imply, for example, technology funds and investment partnerships. As is evident, robust public support is required to turn these commitments into actions. However, empirical studies on attitudes towards international transfers indicate that mobilizing public support in this policy area is hard. The economic literature on international aid and climate change cooperation suggests that the efficiency of international transfers matters. However, public support is also determined by political considerations. Recent studies in political science that gauge the public appetite for international climate finance have noted that international transfers can be invalidated by home-centric preferences, but also that home bias can be softened by the design of transfers in terms of, for example, monitoring and reciprocity mechanisms. Similarly, political scientists have pointed to the powerful role of compensation and just redress for public policymaking. In this study we investigate the determinants of public support for international change policy transfers to developing countries. Additionally, we investigate the types of the countries that the mass public is most amenable to supporting through such transfers.