Economic Exposure and Climate Policy Support

This paper quantifies the relationship between economic exposure to climate policies and climate policy support. We develop a stylised theoretical model to decompose exposure through income, energy spending and vehicle use, and define consistent measures of these exposure channels. We then combine detailed Dutch household administrative data and survey data on climate policy support and find that higher exposure is robustly associated with lower support for stronger climate policies across all three channels. Further analysis reveals that high electricity rather than high natural gas spending is associated with reduced support, and vehicle fuel efficiency is a more important predictor of support than income-adjusted kilometres driven. Income exposure, proxied by the sectoral carbon-intensity of jobs, is particularly salient among older and lower–to-middle educated respondents.