Personal Experience and Support for Climate Change Mitigation Policies: A Revealed Preference Approach

People tend to think of climate change as a distant and remote event that does not affect their livelihoods. This psychological distance can be a barrier against behavior change and support for mitigation policies. Washington State was the first state in the U.S. to put carbon pricing measures on the ballot: Initiative 732 in 2016 and Initiative 1631 in 2018. Both measures were rejected by voters. Prior to both elections, Washingtonians had experienced adverse impacts of climate change across the state: poor air quality due to wildfire smoke in 2018 and an unprecedented widespread drought in 2015. We perform a spatial analysis using voting data on the two carbon pricing measures in Washington to study the effect of experiencing adverse impacts of climate change on support for carbon policies. We find that experiencing poor air quality significantly increases the support for the carbon policy. Moreover, experiencing poor air quality increases the support of Democrats more than Republicans. In case of drought experience, there is no significant relationship at the state level, but there is heterogeneity between voters in Eastern Washington and those in Western Washington: drought experience increases the support of Eastern voters more than Western voters. This might be due to the fact that droughts are more prevalent in Eastern Washington and Eastern residents might see a stronger link between drought and climate change.