Leading by example? EU citizens’ preferences for climate leadership

For global problems like climate change, strong international agreements are difficult to achieve. Alternative solutions might therefore be necessary. In this paper, we study the support for climate leadership in seven European countries. Climate leadership means that an individual country takes the lead by decreasing its carbon emissions above its level of commitment in the current EU agreement and with the intention of inspiring other countries to do likewise. Overall, we find that at realistic cost levels, a majority of people oppose their country taking the lead, and most do not expect that taking the lead will result in other countries following suit. The lack of support is caused by expectations that such leadership will result in other countries behaving as free riders. We do, however, find evidence of preferences for conditional leadership: People are more positive about their country taking the lead if assured that other countries will follow. These preferences are stronger among those who identify as leftwing. Moreover, citizens in smaller countries are more pessimistic that other countries would follow their country’s lead and more sensitive to the response of other EU countries.