Elite Influence on Climate Change Skepticism: Evidence from Close Gubernatorial Elections

Andrew Meyer

Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, 2019, vol. 6, issue 4, 783 - 822

Abstract: Many theorize that public opinion follows political elite on climate change skepticism, yet evidence of a causal link is lacking. I use a regression discontinuity design to establish the impact of the political party of a governor on constituents’ global warming beliefs. I find that, relative to the election of a Democratic governor, the election of a Republican governor significantly decreases the probability of a Republican constituent believing in global warming by approximately 11–15 percentage points; there is no significant impact on Democratic constituents. I also find a negative effect of a Republican governor on belief in human-caused global warming that does not differ by constituent partisan affiliation. These results provide one explanation for the increased political polarization in global warming beliefs despite the scientific consensus. Belief formation often plays an important role in political economy models, so these findings also have implications for implementing climate change policy.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/703744 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/703744 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jaerec:doi:10.1086/703744

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().