Perception of global norm of government climate action and support for domestic climate policies

Abstract

As public support is important for policy changes, it is crucial to understand how citizens construct their views toward climate policies. Based on the widely documented effect of descriptive social norms on human behavior, we hypothesized that individuals' support for climate policies to be implemented in their own country would be stronger when they perceive greater prevalence of climate action by national governments worldwide. We tested this hypothesis with two survey studies (Study 1 and Study 2) and one experiment (Study 3). In the survey studies, using samples from China and the United States (total N = 4033), we observed that respondents who perceived that a stronger global norm of climate efforts by national governments worldwide were more supportive of domestic climate policies. In addition, four mediators underlying this effect (including informational influence, normative influence, and two forms of efficacy beliefs) were identified. In the experiment, with participants from the United State (N = 447), we found that a fact-based informational intervention effectively increased participants’ perceptions of global prevalence of coal power phaseout, which, in turn, led to stronger support for a similar action in their own country. These findings introduce novel perspectives to the understanding of public attitudes toward climate policies and the study of climate change opinions. They also imply that communicators and policymakers can leverage the power of social influence, through messages built around narratives of a global norm, to garner public support for domestic climate efforts.