IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/revpol/v39y2022i4p468-485.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Who should “do more” about climate change? Cultural theory, polycentricity, and public support for climate change actions across actors and governments

Author

Listed:
  • Matthew C. Nowlin

Abstract

Under a polycentric approach to climate change, action is taken at different scales and across all levels of government and sectors of society. Some scholars have argued that such an approach is the best lens to view the governance of climate change and that a polycentric approach has advantages in addressing collective‐action problems. However, taking a polycentric approach would require public support for action at multiple scales. The issue of climate change is polarized across political beliefs and cultural worldviews and little research has examined how the public views climate action at one level of government relative to others as well as relative to actions by the private sector and by individuals. Using an original survey of the US public from October 2017, I explore who it is that the public thinks should "do more" about climate change and the role that the cultural worldviews posited by cultural theory—hierarchical, egalitarian, individualist, and fatalist—plays in shaping those opinions. Overall, I find support for multiple actors doing more to address climate change, but with differences in support between egalitarians and individualists for actors overall and for the federal government in particular. 应对气候变化的多中心措施背景下，各级政府和社会部门都在不同层面采取行动。一些学者主张，这种方法能提供最佳视角审视气候变化治理，并且多中心措施在应对集体行动问题一事上具有优势。不过，采取多中心措施将要求公众对多个层面的行动予以支持。气候变化这一问题在不同政治信仰和文化世界观中出现极化，并且几乎没有研究分析公众如何看待某一级政府相对于其他级政府的气候行动，以及相对于由私人部门和个体采取的气候行动。通过使用一项在2017年10月针对美国公众的原创调查，我探究了公众认为应在气候变化方面“付出更多”的行动者是谁，以及由文化理论提出的文化世界观(等级论、平等主义、个人主义以及宿命论)在形成这些舆论时产生的作用。整体而言，我发现公众认为多个行动者应付出更多以应对气候变化，但平等主义者和个人主义者对行动者的支持普遍存在差异，尤其是对联邦政府的支持。 Bajo un enfoque policéntrico del cambio climático, se toman medidas a diferentes escalas y en todos los niveles de gobierno y sectores de la sociedad. Algunos académicos han argumentado que tal enfoque es la mejor lente para ver la gobernanza del cambio climático y que un enfoque policéntrico tiene ventajas para abordar los problemas de acción colectiva. Sin embargo, adoptar un enfoque policéntrico requeriría el apoyo público para la acción en múltiples escalas. El tema del cambio climático está polarizado entre las creencias políticas y las cosmovisiones culturales y poca investigación ha examinado cómo el público ve la acción climática en un nivel de gobierno en relación con otros, así como en relación con las acciones del sector privado y de los individuos. Usando una encuesta original del público de EE. UU. de octubre de 2017, exploro quién es el público que piensa que debería "hacer más" sobre el cambio climático y el papel que las cosmovisiones culturales postulan por la teoría cultural: jerárquica, igualitaria, individualista y fatalista. ‐‐ juega en la formación de esas opiniones. En general, encuentro apoyo para múltiples actores que hacen más para abordar el cambio climático, pero con diferencias en el apoyo entre igualitarios e individualistas para los actores en general y para el gobierno federal en particular.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthew C. Nowlin, 2022. "Who should “do more” about climate change? Cultural theory, polycentricity, and public support for climate change actions across actors and governments," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 39(4), pages 468-485, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:revpol:v:39:y:2022:i:4:p:468-485
    DOI: 10.1111/ropr.12468
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ropr.12468
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ropr.12468?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Creed Tumlison & Geoboo Song, 2019. "Cultural Values, Trust, and Benefit‐Risk Perceptions of Hydraulic Fracturing: A Comparative Analysis of Policy Elites and the General Public," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 39(3), pages 511-534, March.
    2. Daniel H. Cole, 2011. "From Global to Polycentric Climate Governance," EUI-RSCAS Working Papers 30, European University Institute (EUI), Robert Schuman Centre of Advanced Studies (RSCAS).
    3. Dan M. Kahan & Ellen Peters & Maggie Wittlin & Paul Slovic & Lisa Larrimore Ouellette & Donald Braman & Gregory Mandel, 2012. "The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 2(10), pages 732-735, October.
    4. Dana R. Fisher & Philip Leifeld, 2019. "The polycentricity of climate policy blockage," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 155(4), pages 469-487, August.
    5. Elinor Ostrom, 2016. "Nested Externalities and Polycentric Institutions: Must We Wait for Global Solutions to Climate Change Before Taking Actions at Other Scales?," Studies in Economic Theory, in: Graciela Chichilnisky & Armon Rezai (ed.), The Economics of the Global Environment, pages 259-276, Springer.
    6. Dan M. Kahan & Hank Jenkins-Smith & Donald Braman, 2011. "Cultural cognition of scientific consensus," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(2), pages 147-174, February.
    7. Rachael M. Moyer & Geoboo Song, 2019. "Cultural predispositions, specific affective feelings, and benefit–risk perceptions: explicating local policy elites’ perceived utility of high voltage power line installations," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(4), pages 416-431, April.
    8. Peter D. Howe & Matto Mildenberger & Jennifer R. Marlon & Anthony Leiserowitz, 2015. "Geographic variation in opinions on climate change at state and local scales in the USA," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 5(6), pages 596-603, June.
    9. Natalie M. Jackson, 2015. "A Theory of Preference Formation Among Ideologues and Nonideologues," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 96(1), pages 1-18, March.
    10. Wesley Wehde & Matthew C Nowlin, 2021. "Public Attribution of Responsibility for Disaster Preparedness across Three Levels of Government and the Public: Lessons from a Survey of Residents of the U.S. South Atlantic and Gulf Coast," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 51(2), pages 212-237.
    11. Robert J. Brulle, 2018. "The climate lobby: a sectoral analysis of lobbying spending on climate change in the USA, 2000 to 2016," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 149(3), pages 289-303, August.
    12. Saatvika Rai, 2020. "Policy Adoption and Policy Intensity: Emergence of Climate Adaptation Planning in U.S. States," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 37(4), pages 444-463, July.
    13. Sung Eun Kim & Johannes Urpelainen, 2017. "The Polarization of American Environmental Policy: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of Senate and House Votes, 1971–2013," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 34(4), pages 456-484, July.
    14. Robert Brulle, 2014. "Institutionalizing delay: foundation funding and the creation of U.S. climate change counter-movement organizations," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 122(4), pages 681-694, February.
    15. Barry G. Rabe, 2008. "States on Steroids: The Intergovernmental Odyssey of American Climate Policy," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 25(2), pages 105-128, March.
    16. Dana Fisher & Philip Leifeld & Yoko Iwaki, 2013. "Mapping the ideological networks of American climate politics," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 116(3), pages 523-545, February.
    17. Matthew C. Nowlin & Thomas M. Rabovsky, 2020. "A Cultural Theory of Partisanship and Policy Attitudes," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 101(2), pages 878-892, March.
    18. Daniel H. Cole, 2015. "Advantages of a polycentric approach to climate change policy," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 5(2), pages 114-118, February.
    19. Bromley-Trujillo, Rebecca & Poe, John, 2020. "The importance of salience: public opinion and state policy action on climate change," Journal of Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 40(2), pages 280-304, June.
    20. Sovacool, Benjamin K. & Van de Graaf, Thijs, 2018. "Building or stumbling blocks? Assessing the performance of polycentric energy and climate governance networks," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 317-324.
    21. James W. Stoutenborough & Rebecca Bromley-Trujillo & Arnold Vedlitz, 2014. "Public Support for Climate Change Policy: Consistency in the Influence of Values and Attitudes Over Time and Across Specific Policy Alternatives," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 31(6), pages 555-583, November.
    22. Chad M. Zanocco & Michael D. Jones, 2018. "Cultural Worldviews and Political Process Preferences," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 99(4), pages 1377-1389, December.
    23. Chan, Nathan W. & Morrow, John W., 2019. "Unintended consequences of cap-and-trade? Evidence from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 411-422.
    24. Daniel C. Matisoff, 2008. "The Adoption of State Climate Change Policies and Renewable Portfolio Standards: Regional Diffusion or Internal Determinants?," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 25(6), pages 527-546, December.
    25. Marcel J. Dorsch & Christian Flachsland, 2017. "A Polycentric Approach to Global Climate Governance," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 17(2), pages 45-64, May.
    26. Yuhao Ba & Christopher Galik, 2019. "Polycentric Systems and Multiscale Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation in the Built Environment," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 36(4), pages 473-496, July.
    27. Joseph T. Ripberger & Geoboo Song & Matthew C. Nowlin & Michael D. Jones & Hank C. Jenkins-Smith, 2012. "Reconsidering the Relationship Between Cultural Theory, Political Ideology, and Political Knowledge," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 93(3), pages 713-731, September.
    28. Junghwa Choi & Wesley Wehde, 2019. "Venue Preference and Earthquake Mitigation Policy: Expanding the Micro‐Model of Policy Choice," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 36(5), pages 683-701, September.
    29. Brendon Swedlow & Joseph T. Ripberger & Li‐Yin Liu & Carol L. Silva & Hank Jenkins‐Smith & Branden B. Johnson, 2020. "Construct Validity of Cultural Theory Survey Measures," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2332-2383, October.
    30. Wildavsky, Aaron, 1987. "Choosing Preferences by Constructing Institutions: A Cultural Theory of Preference Formation," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 81(1), pages 3-21, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Temirlan T. Moldogaziev & Rachel M. Krause & Gwen Arnold & Le Ahn Nguyen Long & Tatyana Ruseva & Chris Silvia & Christopher Witko, 2023. "Support for the environment post‐transition? Material concerns and policy tradeoffs," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 40(2), pages 186-206, March.
    2. Nils C. Bandelow & Johanna Hornung & Ilana Schröder & Colette S. Vogeler, 2022. "Hydraulic fracturing, polarization, and environmental policy implementation," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 39(4), pages 384-386, July.
    3. Rahmat, Al Fauzi, 2023. "Mapping Pivotal Issues of Collective Action Research: Scientometrics Analysis of Publications," OSF Preprints 9bvdy, Center for Open Science.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jordan K. Lofthouse & Roberta Q. Herzberg, 2023. "The Continuing Case for a Polycentric Approach for Coping with Climate Change," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-24, February.
    2. Dana R. Fisher & Philip Leifeld, 2019. "The polycentricity of climate policy blockage," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 155(4), pages 469-487, August.
    3. Joshua A. Basseches & Rebecca Bromley-Trujillo & Maxwell T. Boykoff & Trevor Culhane & Galen Hall & Noel Healy & David J. Hess & David Hsu & Rachel M. Krause & Harland Prechel & J. Timmons Roberts & J, 2022. "Climate policy conflict in the U.S. states: a critical review and way forward," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 170(3), pages 1-24, February.
    4. Branden B. Johnson & Brendon Swedlow, 2024. "Scale reliability of alternative cultural theory survey measures," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 58(1), pages 527-557, February.
    5. Branden B. Johnson & Brendon Swedlow, 2021. "Cultural Theory's Contributions to Risk Analysis: A Thematic Review with Directions and Resources for Further Research," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(3), pages 429-455, March.
    6. Donatella Baiardi, 2021. "What do you think about climate change?," Working Papers 477, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics, revised Aug 2021.
    7. Natalie M. Jackson, 2015. "A Theory of Preference Formation Among Ideologues and Nonideologues," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 96(1), pages 1-18, March.
    8. Saatvika Rai, 2020. "Policy Adoption and Policy Intensity: Emergence of Climate Adaptation Planning in U.S. States," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 37(4), pages 444-463, July.
    9. Sugandha Srivastav & Ryan Rafaty, 2023. "Political Strategies to Overcome Climate Policy Obstructionism," Papers 2304.14960, arXiv.org.
    10. Srivastav, Sugandha & Rafaty, Ryan, 2021. "Five Worlds of Political Strategy in the Climate Movement," INET Oxford Working Papers 2021-07, Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.
    11. Jay D. Hmielowski & Meredith Y. Wang & Rebecca R. Donaway, 2018. "Expanding the Political Philosophy Dimension of the RISP Model: Examining the Conditional Indirect Effects of Cultural Cognition," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 38(9), pages 1891-1903, September.
    12. Tiffany H. Morrison & W. Neil Adger & Katrina Brown & Maria Carmen Lemos & Dave Huitema & Terry P. Hughes, 2017. "Mitigation and adaptation in polycentric systems: sources of power in the pursuit of collective goals," Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 8(5), September.
    13. Derek Glasgow & Shuang Zhao & Saatvika Rai, 2021. "Rethinking Climate Change Leadership: An Analysis of the Ambitiousness of State GHG Targets," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 38(4), pages 398-426, July.
    14. Kathryn Harrison, 2013. "Federalism and Climate Policy Innovation: A Critical Reassessment," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 39(s2), pages 95-108, August.
    15. Elise Grieg, 2021. "Public opinion and special interests in American environmental politics," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 21/349, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    16. Rachael M. Moyer, 2022. "Images of controversy: Examining cognition of hydraulic fracturing among policy elites and the general public," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 39(4), pages 441-467, July.
    17. Donatella Baiardi, 2021. "What do you think about climate change?," Working Paper series 21-16, Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis.
    18. Matias Spektor & Guilherme N. Fasolin & Juliana Camargo, 2023. "Climate change beliefs and their correlates in Latin America," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-11, December.
    19. Janel Jett & Leigh Raymond, 2021. "Issue Framing and U.S. State Energy and Climate Policy Choice," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 38(3), pages 278-299, May.
    20. Phillip M. Hannam & Vítor V. Vasconcelos & Simon A. Levin & Jorge M. Pacheco, 2017. "Incomplete cooperation and co-benefits: deepening climate cooperation with a proliferation of small agreements," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 144(1), pages 65-79, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:revpol:v:39:y:2022:i:4:p:468-485. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ipsonea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.