What Drives Public Support for Climate Spending? Experimental Evidence from the UK

Our study concerns the origins of public support for spending on climate mitigation policy. Focusing on the UK, we seek to explain why support for such spending remains high, despite much of the benefit going to other countries who are more geographically exposed to the negative effects of a changing climate. This is puzzling in an academic sense, given a lack of public support for comparable spending on issues like foreign aid. We propose two frameworks for understanding public support: risk and altruism. Under the first, respondents' support is a function of their perception that the UK is at risk from climate change. Under the second, support stems from a desire to help those in other countries more exposed. We use a survey experiment to try to prime both the risk and altruistic components of climate change, and see how support varies accordingly. We anticipate that our findings will make an important contribution to the academic literature on climate change support, but will also be of interest to policymakers seeking to maximise public consent for spending going forwards.