Redistribution is unlikely to overcome distributional concerns about regulatory climate policies in the residential sector

While climate scientists largely agree that we are in a severe climate crisis, political leaders around the world struggle with the drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that are needed. The literature on public support indicates that this is often due to domestic distributive conflicts over short-term policy costs, especially for market-based policies. This study focuses on two regulation-based policy instruments (an obligation to retrofit building envelopes and a ban on new fossil-fuelled boilers) that target the same level of emissions reductions in the Swiss residential sector, but with different distributions of costs between tenants and homeowners. In a large-scale preregistered survey experiment (n= 1831), conducted in summer 2025, we inform respondents about the effectiveness of these policy instruments to assess public support. We experimentally manipulate whether distributive information (disaggregated by dwelling type (flat or house) and ownership type (owners or renters) is displayed and whether redistributive measures (policy exceptions or targeted subsidies) are included in the policy proposal. The results show that no redistributive measure can recover the drop in public support from providing the information on the policies' distributive effects. Notwithstanding, there is still a majority support for banning fossil-fuel boilers rather than retrofitting building envelopes. Additional subgroup analyses show that homeowners oppose the latter across all experimental conditions, including the control group. This indicates that homeowners are already aware of the costs for building envelope retrofits, before the experimental treatment can make policy costs salient through distributive information. As they are also unlikely to be more supportive when redistributive measures are implemented, a key obstacle persists.