People with neoliberal views are less likely to support climate-friendly policies – new research

This article was originally published on The Conversation on 30 April.

  <p>Donald Trump won the US election on a campaign that included <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-election-trump-is-threatening-to-turn-back-the-tide-on-americas-environmental-laws-and-reverse-climate-progress-242456">rolling back</a>  environmental laws. In the UK, Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch has called the national net zero target <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/mar/23/kemi-badenoch-accused-of-breaking-pledge-to-tory-mps-of-net-zero-by-2050">“impossible”</a>. And former prime minister Tony Blair has said the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpvrwyp0jx3o">current approach</a> of phasing out fossil fuels is “doomed to fail”. </p>

<p>Meanwhile in Germany, the parties in the most likely incoming coalition government <a href="https://theconversation.com/german-election-why-most-political-parties-arent-talking-about-the-climate-crisis-249731">hardly engaged</a> with climate policy during the recent election campaign – and the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which openly <a href="https://www.tagesschau.de/faktenfinder/weidel-klimawandel-101.html">denies</a> human-made climate change, received 20% of the vote. </p>

<p>With political leaders around the world moving away from progressive climate policy, it’s worth asking: is this what the public wants? </p>

<p>When it comes to the climate, what people think is <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14693062.2023.2273302">influenced</a> by where they live and what else they believe in. In <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800925000862?via%3Dihub">recently published research</a>, we sought to find out just how much people’s ideologies affected their views on climate policy. </p>

<p>We surveyed representative samples of the public in six countries about their attitudes towards different types of climate policy. We asked about support for regulation (for example, building and vehicle standards or product bans), taxes (like carbon taxes), subsidies (to promote low-carbon alternatives), and information-based policies (such as emission disclosure requirements). Our survey covered policies in transport, housing, energy and industry.</p>

<p>We also asked respondents about their ideologies: cultural worldviews, personal values, free market beliefs and political trust. Our findings reveal how people’s ideologies shape their support for climate policies.</p>

<p>We included three high-income countries of the global north (the US, UK and Germany) and three upper-middle income countries from the global south (Brazil, South Africa and China). Together, these six countries are responsible for half of global <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-share-of-co2-emissions">CO₂ emissions</a>.  </p>

<p>Our definition of global south, which includes countries such as China, is based on work by <a href="https://unctad.org/system/files/official-document/osg2018d1_en.pdf">UN Trade and Development</a> and the UN <a href="https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/group-77-fifty">G-77</a> countries. It includes Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, most of Asia (excluding Israel, Japan and South Korea) and Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand). These countries generally have lower per capita income and are considered “developing” compared to global north countries. </p>

<p>This comparison is important because, as we will explain, political and economic ideologies that originated in the global north can influence how people view climate policies.</p>

<p>Across all policy types, we found more support for climate policies in the global south countries. In the global north countries, we found only minority support for regulatory policies and climate-related taxes. In Germany, support for regulatory policies and taxes was as little as 18%. </p>

<p>Subsidies for the four sectors – for example, to support renewable energy projects or the production of <a href="https://www.weforum.org/stories/2022/07/green-steel-emissions-net-zero/">green steel</a> – received 35% support in Germany and 48% in the US. In contrast, the majority of the public in the three countries of the global south supported subsidies and regulatory climate policies.</p>

<p>As with subsidies, we found strong majority support for information-based policies in the three countries of the global south (74-79%), against only minority support in Germany (36%) and the US (49%). In the UK, 53% supported information-based climate policies.</p>

<p>Personal values play a role in support for the policies. Our findings show people with stronger <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epdf/10.1177/0013916506297831">biospheric values</a> – the importance people place on the environment and the relationship between humans and nature – are more supportive of climate policies. This is true irrespective of the country they live in. People who are more trusting of political institutions and politicians also support these policies more. </p>

<p>But demographics such as age, gender, education or income have a negligible effect on attitudes towards these policies, when accounting for other factors in our analysis.</p>

<h2>Neoliberalism and the climate</h2>

<p>We observed a strong link between a neoliberal worldview and lack of support for the climate policies in our study. As a political economic project, neoliberalism originated in the global north. But it continues to take root in the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvjghwxz">global south</a>, particularly in Latin America.</p>

<p>The belief that individuals need to take care of themselves and are responsible for their own fortune and problems was associated with less support for climate policies. And in every country we studied, we found a strong relationship between support for the free market and lack of support for climate policies. </p>

<p>People who believe the free market is best at allocating outcomes efficiently and meeting human needs without government interference, and that it is more important than some local environmental concerns, show less support for the climate policies.</p>

<p>These two sets of beliefs – individualistic worldviews and support for the free market – are the core principles of neoliberal thought. </p>

<figure class="align-center ">
            <img alt="Smoke coming out of a factory chimney" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/664699/original/file-20250429-74-pxtgf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/664699/original/file-20250429-74-pxtgf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/664699/original/file-20250429-74-pxtgf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/664699/original/file-20250429-74-pxtgf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/664699/original/file-20250429-74-pxtgf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/664699/original/file-20250429-74-pxtgf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/664699/original/file-20250429-74-pxtgf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
            <figcaption>
              <span class="caption">In the Global North countries, we found only only minority support for regulatory policies and climate-related taxes.</span>
              <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/factory-chimney-releases-smoke-nature-pollution-2405649017">Fotogrin/Shutterstock</a></span>
            </figcaption>
          </figure>

<p>The superiority of the market over governments as an efficient and fair allocation machine has been the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvjghwxz">mantra</a> of neoliberal politicians, thinktanks and institutions for more than half a century. </p>

<p>Neoliberalism opposes government regulation and spending, and supports the free market. It also fosters an individualistic worldview. Instead of seeing themselves as workers, citizens or members of a collective, people are persuaded to internalise market logic – to see themselves as individuals who are out to maximise their personal profit. </p>

<p>The <a href="https://sites.otago.ac.nz/Sites/article/view/312">cultural shift</a> from more communitarian and egalitarian ideals towards an ideology based on the self-driven individual and the free market has been quite successful. Empirical <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797617700622">evidence</a> from 41 countries shows that individualist practices and values around the world have surged significantly over the past 50 years.</p>

<p>We know from <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/106591290305600103">research</a> that what the public thinks (or votes for) does influence what governments do. This is true even when accounting for the influence of powerful interest groups. </p>

<p>So, those creating and campaigning for urgently needed climate policies need to take this into account. Support for climate policies isn’t just about whether someone believes in human-made climate change or cares about the planet – there are deeply-rooted ideological factors at play too.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/253478/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p>

  <p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/felix-schulz-1485829">Felix Schulz</a>, Research Fellow, Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/lund-university-756">Lund University</a></em> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/christian-bretter-1483241">Christian Bretter</a>, Senior Research Fellow in Environmental Psychology, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/the-university-of-queensland-805">The University of Queensland</a></em></span></p>

  <p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/people-with-neoliberal-views-are-less-likely-to-support-climate-friendly-policies-new-research-253478">original article</a>.</p>
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