LIST OF PANELS

The latest Special Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change places strong emphasis on the importance of ambitious public policies for the decarbonization of our economies. While a considerable body of research on the effectiveness and ‘optimal design’ of public policies to reach the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement already exists, we still know much less about public perceptions and policymakers’ preferences toward different policy options, and how these are shaped. However, when gauging the political feasibility of different decarbonization pathways, public perceptions and preferences are a crucial factor.

Against this background, this panel aims at furthering our understanding of citizens’ and policymakers’ appetite for public policies that contribute to the decarbonization and increased environmental sustainability of our societies. Prior studies have already shown that specific policy design features can have an important impact on citizens’ policy preferences, and that socio-psychological and contextual factors like policy endorsements by visible political actors can influence public opinion and policy attitudes, especially in contexts where political polarization is high and/or environmental and energy policies are perceived as particularly controversial.

Given the pace required to avert irreversible harmful changes to the Earth’s climate, the determinants of perceptions and preferences toward ambitious climate policies deserve further investigation. For instance, research on climate policy preferences has to date underinvestigated the dynamics of preference change in competitive elite environments, as well as the factors that drive pro-climate policy preferences in light of issue competition. Other important research avenues concern the identification of factors that influence the salience of climate change as a public policy problem, also considering the potential trade-offs of climate policies with other policies. Moreover, in light of the urgency of actions required to meet climate goals, the temporal dimension of policy preferences gains in importance.

Reaching a deeper understanding of preferences and public opinion regarding climate policies, of their distribution across time and space, and of mechanisms of preference formation and change, can give crucial insights into the feasibility of different pathways to decarbonization. We encourage work that examines climate policies, but also welcome contributions focusing on perceptions and preferences in the context of sectoral public policies with a nexus to climate change – e.g. agriculture, energy, transportation. Importantly, the panel gives particular importance to interdisciplinary dialogue. We welcome empirical studies employing different approaches and methodologies.  Apart from perspectives rooted in public opinion and elite studies, behavioral sciences can provide useful insights into mechanisms of preference formation and heterogeneities in perceptions of public policies.

The purpose of this panel is to collect contributions that shed light on citizens’ and policymakers’ perceptions and preferences with respect to climate policies. Understanding policy preferences – and how they are shaped and evolve over time and in different institutional contexts – is of major importance to assess the political feasibility of different decarbonization pathways, and of strategies for promoting environmental sustainability in general.

The objective of this panel is to bridge the gap between approaches investigating policy perceptions and preferences from different disciplinary and conceptual angles. Hence, we invite studies rooted in public opinion research and political behavior, but also submissions from behavioral scientists, decision scientists, and environmental psychologists.

Important questions of interest include – but are not limited to – the mechanisms of policy preference formation, with particular attention to the contribution that behavioral sciences can make; the role of frames and social norms in influencing perceptions and preferences; the interplay of cognitive and affective factors in preference formation; individual and cross-country heterogeneity in policy perceptions and preferences; the importance of specific policy design features in shaping policy preferences; potential systematic differences in perceptions of  supply- or demand-side measures; the impact of political polarization and of the rise of populism on environmental attitudes; the role of short-term trade-offs between climate and other policy goals, as well as the influence of considerations of temporality; and the impact of elite cues and policy endorsements by key societal actors.

The panel welcomes papers investigating these issues from different perspectives, in order to foster interdisciplinary dialogue and cross-fertilization. Methodologically, we encourage submissions of empirical studies based on both quantitative and qualitative methods, employing, inter alia, experimental approaches, case studies, and text analysis techniques. Methods of data collection and analysis should be as transparent as possible. We equally welcome papers focusing on existing or proposed policies at various (local, national or global) levels. In an attempt to fill an important gap in the literature, we specifically encourage comparative studies focusing on between-country heterogeneity in policy preferences.