Beyond Positive Partisanship: Understanding the Roles of Negative Identity and Affect in Individual Climate and Environmental Policy Preferences

For climate and environmental policies to succeed, public acceptance and support are imperative. Positive partisanship has been studied extensively in this context and existing literature seems to indicate its strong relationship with individuals’ attitudes towards such policies. In recent years, however, calls for a more nuanced understanding of political identity have grown. Due to the politicised and polarised nature of climate change in politics and the prominence of negative attitudes towards parties and politicians, exploring these in the climate change context is crucial, however, has so far has not explicitly been done. This paper uses the British Election Study online panel data (Wave 23, collected in May 2022) to empirically investigate the role of political identity beyond partisanship in individuals’ environmental policy preferences, utilising a like-dislike scale as a proxy to conceptualise negative affect. Findings show that negative affect towards right-leaning parties increases the odds of prioritising environmental protection over economic growth and of indicating the environment to be the most important issue facing the country. Results for negative affect towards left-leaning parties indicate the opposite, resulting in decreased odds of prioritising environmental protection over economic growth and indicating the environment to be the most important issue facing the country. These effects remain when controlling for positive partisanship, demographic factors, and individual left-right values. Similar findings were made when examining negative affect towards left-leaning and right-leaning party leaders. Concluding, this paper finds that negative affect towards parties and party leaders in GB is associated with differing preferences for environmental protection. With that, the results of this paper add to our theoretical understanding of a more nuanced form of political identity in an environmental policy context. Moreover, in addition to those scales available to measure negative affect, it emphasises the need for a widely available, universally recognised scale measuring negative partisanship and advocates for a clear definition of the concept. These findings offer valuable insight for policymakers to consider in the proposition and communication of new climate and environmental policies.