IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/socsci/v86y2005i1p87-108.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Public Opinion and Dynamic Representation in the American States: The Case of Environmental Attitudes

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Johnson
  • Paul Brace
  • Kevin Arceneaux

Abstract

Objective. We investigate causal processes linking environmental conditions, attitudes, and policies in the American states: Is public opinion about ecology shaped by environmental conditions? Are state policymakers responsive to environmental opinions? Does public opinion respond to policy adoption? Methods. Using public opinion data from the DDB Worldwide Life Style Survey to measure aggregate state attitudes about the environment, as well as measures of water quality and policy intervention, we capture the dynamics of representation in the American states on the environment during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Results. Our findings support a thermostatic model of representation—state environmental opinions are influenced by environmental conditions and are responsive to policy outputs alongside improved environmental conditions. Conclusions. This model of the opinion‐policy linkage refines our understanding of representation and focuses us not just on the passage of public policy to address public desires, but the effectiveness of that policy as well.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Johnson & Paul Brace & Kevin Arceneaux, 2005. "Public Opinion and Dynamic Representation in the American States: The Case of Environmental Attitudes," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 86(1), pages 87-108, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:socsci:v:86:y:2005:i:1:p:87-108
    DOI: 10.1111/j.0038-4941.2005.00292.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0038-4941.2005.00292.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.0038-4941.2005.00292.x?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. Arik Levinson, 2001. "An Industry-Adjusted Index of State Environmental Compliance Costs," NBER Chapters, in: Behavioral and Distributional Effects of Environmental Policy, pages 131-158, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Tomz, Michael & Wittenberg, Jason & King, Gary, 2003. "Clarify: Software for Interpreting and Presenting Statistical Results," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 8(i01).
    3. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    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. Michael J. White & Lori M. Hunter, 2009. "Public Perception of Environmental Issues in a Developing Setting: Environmental Concern in Coastal Ghana," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 90(4), pages 960-982, December.
    2. Simon Otjes & André Krouwel, 2023. "The nuclear option: Voting for the pan-European party Volt," European Union Politics, , vol. 24(4), pages 726-750, December.
    3. David M. Konisky & Jeffrey Milyo & Lilliard E. Richardson, 2008. "Environmental Policy Attitudes: Issues, Geographical Scale, and Political Trust," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 89(5), pages 1066-1085, December.
    4. Zhaoting Xing & Jin Guo & Zizhen Zhang & Ting Xue & Ming Yang & Wenzong Wu, 2024. "Research on the Impact of Environmental Inequality on Labor Mobility—A Study Based on the China General Social Survey (CGSS)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(22), pages 1-18, November.
    5. Neal D. Woods, 2021. "The State of State Environmental Policy Research: A Thirty‐Year Progress Report," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 38(3), pages 347-369, May.
    6. Panarello, Demetrio, 2021. "Economic insecurity, conservatism, and the crisis of environmentalism: 30 years of evidence," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    7. Betul Gokkir & J. Samuel Barkin, 2019. "Are liberal states greener? Political ideology and CO2 emissions in American states, 1980–2012," Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Springer;Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences, vol. 9(4), pages 386-396, December.
    8. Mohamed M. Mostafa, 2016. "Post-materialism, Religiosity, Political Orientation, Locus of Control and Concern for Global Warming: A Multilevel Analysis Across 40 Nations," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 128(3), pages 1273-1298, September.
    9. Mohamed M. Mostafa, 2020. "Catastrophe Theory Predicts International Concern for Global Warming," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 18(3), pages 709-731, September.
    10. Melstrom, Richard T. & Malone, Trey, 2023. "Voter evaluations regarding the tradeoffs between agricultural production and water quality in Lake Erie," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 287(C).

    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. Danny Hayes & Seth C. McKee, 2009. "The Participatory Effects of Redistricting," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(4), pages 1006-1023, October.
    2. Cheryl Boudreau, 2012. "Greater than the sum of their parts? When combinations of institutions improve citizens’ decisions," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 24(1), pages 90-109, January.
    3. Suzanne L. Parker & Glenn R. Parker & James A. McCann, 2008. "Opinion Taking within Friendship Networks," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(2), pages 412-420, April.
    4. Dong (Dan) Lee & Thomas E. Borcherding, 2006. "Public Choice of Tax and Regulatory Instruments—The Role of Heterogeneity," Public Finance Review, , vol. 34(6), pages 607-636, November.
    5. Fredriksson, Per G. & Wang, Le & Mamun, Khawaja A., 2011. "Are politicians office or policy motivated? The case of U.S. governors' environmental policies," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 241-253, September.
    6. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    7. Fernando Bruna, 2025. "Beyond selfishness: the interaction of income and human values in shaping Europeans’ ideology," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(51), pages 8471-8485, November.
    8. Kaivan Munshi & Mark Rosenzweig, 2008. "The Efficacy of Parochial Politics: Caste, Commitment, and Competence in Indian Local Governments," NBER Working Papers 14335, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Burkhard Schipper & Hee Yeul Woo, 2012. "Political Awareness and Microtargeting of Voters in Electoral Competition," Working Papers 124, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    10. Marco Faravelli & Randall Walsh, 2011. "Smooth Politicians And Paternalistic Voters: A Theory Of Large Elections," Levine's Working Paper Archive 786969000000000250, David K. Levine.
    11. Eric Kaufmann & Henry Patterson, 2006. "Intra‐Party Support for the Good Friday Agreement in the Ulster Unionist Party," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 54(3), pages 509-532, October.
    12. Micael Castanheira, 2003. "Why Vote For Losers?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(5), pages 1207-1238, September.
    13. Mihir Bhattacharya, 2019. "Constitutionally consistent voting rules over single-peaked domains," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 52(2), pages 225-246, February.
    14. Hanne Fjelde & Desirée Nilsson, 2018. "The rise of rebel contenders," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 55(5), pages 551-565, September.
    15. Christoph Schwierz & Boris Augurzky & Axel Focke & Jürgen Wasem, 2012. "Demand, selection and patient outcomes in German acute care hospitals," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(3), pages 209-221, March.
    16. Sven Banisch & Eckehard Olbrich, 2021. "An Argument Communication Model of Polarization and Ideological Alignment," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 24(1), pages 1-1.
    17. Robbett, Andrea & Matthews, Peter Hans, 2018. "Partisan bias and expressive voting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 107-120.
    18. Felis, Paweł & Rosłaniec, Henryk, . "Wykorzystanie podatku od nieruchomości w lokalnej polityce podatkowej miast Unii Metropolii Polskich," Gospodarka Narodowa-The Polish Journal of Economics, Szkoła Główna Handlowa w Warszawie / SGH Warsaw School of Economics, vol. 2017(2).
    19. Peter Nijkamp & Marc van der Burch & Gabriella Vindigni, 2002. "A Comparative Institutional Evaluation of Public-Private Partnerships in Dutch Urban Land-use and Revitalisation Projects," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 39(10), pages 1865-1880, September.
    20. Vincenzo Atella & Jay Coggins & Federico Perali, 2005. "Aversion to inequality in Italy and its determinants," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 2(2), pages 117-144, January.

    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:socsci:v:86:y:2005:i:1:p:87-108. 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: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0038-4941 .

    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.