Understanding the political polarization of climate change

The researchers in this project want to examine how political polarization impacts people’s views on climate issues, and their willingness to act in an environmentally friendly way.

Climate change due to human activity is causing great harm to nature and impacting the lives of millions of people over the world. In order to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases in line with the Paris Climate Agreement, it is essential to understand what influences people’s views on climate, and what makes them more or less willing to act in the best interests of the environment.

Although Sweden has long played a leading role in global efforts to mitigate climate change, progress has petered out. One possible reason is political polarization and the strong links between political identities and views on climate that have developed in Sweden and many other countries.

The purpose of the project is to examine how political polarization impacts people’s views on climate and their readiness to act in an environmentally friendly way. The project focuses particularly on affective polarization. This type of polarization means that people identify strongly with a specific party or political group, and feel strong negative emotions and bias toward other parties and their supporters.

Affective polarization can influence how people take in and process information on climate change. This may cause them to adopt more extreme attitudes in relation to policy questions, and oppose political proposals and standpoints that they associate with the other side.

Politicians may have incentives to encourage polarization of this kind by using rhetoric that highlights political identities as a means of garnering votes. But politicians could change their rhetoric and thereby reduce polarization, influencing people’s views on climate and their willingness to engage in sustainable behaviors.

The project is split into three parts designed to answer different questions. The first part examines the correlation between affective polarization and views on climate change. The second part examines whether politicians use polarizing rhetoric when they talk about climate change. The final part addresses how political rhetoric impacts people’s opinions and willingness to change their behavior in favor of climate and sustainability.

The researchers will be using different methods, including representative questionnaires completed by Swedish citizens, experiments, and computerized text analysis of political debates in Parliament.

The researchers consider it essential to understand the psychological mechanisms linked to political identities and how they impact attitudes and behaviors relating to climate change in order to mitigate the adverse consequences of polarization on climate.