Policy Pulse: Sensing the Sentiment toward Climate Policies in the Public Sphere

Nisan Gorgulu and Penelope Ann Mealy

No 11353, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Public sentiment toward climate policies plays a critical role in their adoption, implementation, and effectiveness. This paper introduces a novel methodology for assessing policy sentiment from news media articles in 2017–23, applied here to climate policies. The methodology focuses on two policy instruments that have received significant public opposition in recent years: carbon taxes and emissions trading schemes. The results show that the sentiment scores for each article align with intuitive notions of positive and negative sentiment, and average sentiment scores at the country level are reasonably well aligned with public opinion surveys associated with each instrument. Sentiment time trends also map well to key, well-known public protest events such as the Yellow Vests protests in France. Sentiment is more positive for emissions trading schemes compared to carbon taxes, and this result holds across all income and regional groups. The findings further indicate that sentiment toward both carbon taxes and emission trading schemes has improved over time. Given its cost-effectiveness, scalability, and timeliness compared to traditional surveys, this study offers a valuable and broadly applicable tool for tracking the pulse of policy sentiment in real time across a wide range of policy domains, including but not limited to climate policy.

Date: 2026-04-15
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