Interests, Norms and Support for the Provision of Global Public Goods: The Case of Climate Co-operation

Abstract

Mitigating climate change requires countries to provide a global public good. As with most public goods, domestic political conflict is a central determinant of its provision. Which cleavages underlie mass attitudes toward international climate policy? We argue that asymmetries in industry-specific costs of emission abatement and internalized social norms help explain support for climate policy. To test our predictions we develop novel measures of individuals’ sector-dependent costs of climate change mitigation using objective industry-level pollution data and employ quasi-behavioral measures of social norms. Our results suggest that the expected industry-specific costs of climate regulation as well as norms such as reciprocity and altruism help explain why some individuals support climate policy while others do not. These findings have important implications for scholarship on individual policy preferences and for our understanding of the domestic politics of international climate cooperation.

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