Economic Exposure and Climate Policy Support

Inge van den Bijgaart, Jacob Jordaan and Tommaso Felici

No 12520, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: This paper quantifies the relationship between economic exposure to climate policies and climate policy support. We develop a stylised theoretical model to decompose exposure through income, energy spending and vehicle use, and identify consistent measures of these channels. Using detailed Dutch administrative data, we document substantial heterogeneity in exposure to climate policy, both across and within income groups. Combining these measures with survey data on climate policy support, we find that higher exposure is robustly associated with lower support for stronger climate policies across all three channels. This negative relationship holds even after accounting for a rich set of socio-demographic, municipality, and climate-belief controls. Further analysis reveals that high electricity rather than high natural gas spending is associated with reduced support, and vehicle fuel efficiency matters more for support than income-adjusted kilometres driven. Income exposure, proxied by the sectoral carbon-intensity of jobs, is particularly salient among older and lower-to-middle educated respondents. The estimated magnitudes are modest: a one-standard-deviation increase in any single exposure channel lowers the probability of support by at most two percentage points. Economic exposure thus emerges as a robust, theoretically grounded determinant of support, shifting it at the margin.

Keywords: climate policy support; economic exposure; distributional effects; political economy; household administrative data; self-interest (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D78 Q52 Q54 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-env
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