Understanding Italians’ Responses to Climate Change and Climate Policy

This paper presents an empirical analysis of Italian attitudes towards climate change and climate policies based on a comprehensive survey of 5,637 respondents. The study investigates the potential drivers of public support for various climate policies, including carbon taxes, product bans, and subsidies for green technologies, in light of public resistance observed in other countries. We use ordered probit models to address support for specific policy types and a multivariate probit model to explore the interdependencies across public opinions on taxes, bans, and subsidies. Our findings indicate that attitudes toward climate policy are primarily shaped by a combination of individual characteristics —such as political affiliation, climate change awareness, and personal intentions — and, to a lesser extent, by the respondents’ employment sector. We find that older individuals, those with left-leaning political views, and those with higher climate engagement are consistently more likely to support a broad range of climate policies. Conversely, individuals who deny climate change and those working in hard-to-abate industries show a certain opposition. The analysis also strongly highlights the importance of social equity, as concern about inequality is positively correlated with support to subsidies, while concerns about impacts on personal wage and wealth appear to reduce, in several cases, support to climate policies. Our multivariate analysis also reveals a high correlation across different policy types support, suggesting an underlying, unified view in favour (or against) climate action. Similarly to Douenne and Fabre (2022), our results highlight the importance of designing policies that are not only economically sound but also address social equity concerns, such as through targeted revenue recycling, to enhance public acceptability and mitigate potential resistance.