Journal
AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW
Volume 116, Issue 4, Pages 1165-1183Publisher
CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1017/S0003055422000223
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Balzan Foundation
- President's Global Innovation Fund at Columbia University
- Global Challenges Research Fund at the University of Essex
- Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
Ask authors/readers for more resources
To gain support for climate change policies, it is important to provide economic compensation to individuals who bear the costs of decarbonization. Surveys conducted in coal-producing regions show a preference for compensation for lost jobs, while the general public focuses more on redistribution mechanisms and investment.
Combating climate change requires large economic adjustments with significant distributional implications. To build coalitions of support, scholars and policy makers propose compensating individuals who will bear decarbonization's costs. What are the determinants of public opinion regarding climate compensation and investment? We theorize that climate policy vulnerability and climate change vulnerability induce support for distinct types of climate policy. Fielding original surveys in the United States and India, we show that people who reside in coal-producing regions prefer compensation for lost jobs. The general public privileges diffuse redistribution mechanisms and investments, discounting compensation to targeted groups. Those who are both physically and economically vulnerable have cross-cutting preferences. Nevertheless, there is considerable support across our samples for policies that compensate different coalitions of climate-vulnerable citizens, in line with theories of just energy transition and embedded liberalism. We trace the distinctive compensatory preferences of fossil fuel communities to a logic of shared community identities.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available