Populism and Support for Climate Policies. Evidence from a Survey Experiment.

There is almost a consensus amongst policy makers and scholars that far-reaching policies are necessary to mitigate climate change. However, only 48 % of US citizens agreed that earth is warming because of human activity in a recent PEW survey. This scepticism potentially undermines proposed policies and hampers climate politics. Research focuses on political ideology and socio-demographics to explain the lack of support for climate policies. We pose that climate politics are especially prone to populist critique, as this issue area is elite driven and abstract. Specifically, we argue that individuals follow populist frames, which oppose climate policies depending on their prior level of populist attitudes. Using a 2x2 design, individuals receive either climate specific or more general statements about how the political elite deals with related policy problems (populist frame or non-populist frame). In order to test these theoretical arguments we use original and nationally representative US survey data with 3600 respondents.