Who’s afraid of more ambitious climate policy? How distributional implications shape policy support and compensatory preferences

Abstract

Nation states need to strengthen domestic climate policies to address global climate change. As more ambitious climate policy shapes the material interests of different societal groups, distributional conflict about who wins and loses will likely intensify over the coming years. I use the recent complete revision of the Swiss CO2 law as an example of a change towards more ambitious climate policy and experimentally test whether distributional implications resulting from this policy change affect both people’s policy support and redistributive preferences. I establish that learning about negative impacts on some societal groups significantly decreases support, while information about groups profiting also increases support. Moreover, being informed about the negative consequences of ambitious climate policy makes people more likely to support redistributive schemes, even if they are not personally affected. These results show the centrality of distributional implications for the political feasibility of progressive climate policy.

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