Improving public support for climate action through multilateralism

For decades, policymakers have sought multilateral climate agreements partly because they believe publics are more supportive of costly climate policies when other countries also act, due to higher perceived effectiveness and fairness. Some recent work, however, questions whether foreign policy choices affect public approval. This paper reports two multi-country experimental studies showing that multilateralism significantly increases public support for costly climate action by improving beliefs about effectiveness and the policy’s perceived fairness. Pursuing climate action within a multilateral setting not only promises improved equity impacts but may also generate higher levels of public support. The study was pre-registered at the AEA RCT Registry (#AEARCTR-0004090).

Michael M. Bechtel, Kenneth F. Scheve, Elisabeth van Lieshout