Environmental Protection vs Economic Growth

• Study investigates the relationship between prioritizing environmental protection over economic growth and government spending on environmental protection.
• Examines the relationship in 27 OECD countries with over 65,000 respondents.
• Government spending and attitudes toward environmental protection are related.
• Trust in government moderates the relationship between government spending and attitudes towards environmental protection.

Introduction

• Public concern for the environment is complex and can be seen as distant to everyday life.
• Personal experience is needed for many to perceive environmental risks.
• Environmental attitudes are vulnerable to political argumentation and elite cues.
• Public opinion and concern are important for government priorities and financial investments in environmental protection.
• Attitudes are complex and multi-dimensional, with contextual factors influencing economic trade-offs.
• Study focuses on attitudes toward the economic-environment trade-off.
• Thermostatic model, complex belief systems, and cognitive dissonance theory are used.
• Government spending may shift opinions thermostatically or display economic consequences, affecting attitudes.
• Political trust affects policy attitudes and environmental issues.
• Individuals with high trust are more susceptible to government policy influence.
• Findings show a thermostatic relationship where higher environmental spending relates to increased prioritization of economic growth, especially with low trust in government.

Environmental Attitudes and Country-Level Factors

• Public opinion and country-level factors are intertwined.
• Economic conditions correlate with environmental attitudes.
• Unemployment affects environmental concern more than GDP.
• People prioritize immediate needs over environmental issues when worried about money.
• Focus is on the relationship between environmental spending and attitudes toward prioritizing environmental protection.

The Relationship Between Policy and Attitudes

• Policies and attitudes have a relationship, including environmental attitudes.
• Environmental policy responds to public opinion, affecting voting and legislation.
• Policies impact attitudes.
• Thermostatic model suggests a dynamic relationship between the public and representatives.
• Positive policy feedback can cause path dependencies.
• Feedback effects focus on attitudes towards the welfare state.
• Regime type creates attitude baselines, and institutions affect attitudes.
• Policy can affect attitudes differently depending on the individual and context.

Adjustment or Reaction to Policy

• Aligning attitudes to support policy are adjustment effects.
• Complexity of belief systems explains why attitudes change due to surroundings.
• Individuals hold various, sometimes inconsistent, attitudes.
• Attitudes are a mix of considerations, and changes affect the balance.
• Government policies serve as elite cues, signaling importance.
• Limited risk perceptions can make attitudes more friable.
• People lack integrated attitudes when effects are distant in time and space.
• Survey responses are affected by salient attitudes.
• Elite cues can easily affect environmental protection attitudes.
• Cognitive dissonance theory explains discomfort from mismatch between values and surroundings.
• Consonance is restored by adjusting attitudes or finding other supports.
• Reacting involves finding other supports in one’s surroundings.
• Thermostatic model involves a dynamic relationship where the public reacts to counterbalance government actions.
• Negative feedback occurs when spending increases, and the public lowers its preference.
• People are categorized by perceptions of economic trade-offs.
• Conditional believers recognize economic effects and alter views based on circumstances.
• Soft environmentalists have weaker views and are more inclined to change them based on economic consequences.
• Increased environmental spending displays economic consequences, impacting attitudes.
• Limited studies show thermostatic effects.
• Hypothesis: Government spending on environmental protection relates to attitudes on prioritizing the environment versus economic growth.

Environmental Attitudes and Individual-Level Factors

• Education, gender, income, age, and political ideology consistently correlate with environmental attitudes.
• Higher education relates to pro-environmental values.
• Wealthy individuals can afford to be more concerned about environmental issues.
• Women tend to be more pro-environmental and altruistic.
• Negative correlation between age and strength of environmental attitudes exists.
• Left political orientation is positively related to pro-environmental views.

Political Trust: Moderating the Relationship Between Policy and Attitudes

• Trust involves accepting vulnerability based on positive expectations.
• Political trust is confidence in the political system.
• Measures trust in government.
• Weak perceptions may diminish trust and increase skepticism towards government expenditure.
• Political trust affects policy attitudes and support, including environmental issues.
• Supporters of carbon taxation have high political trust.
• Trust simplifies the choice of whether to support a policy.
• The thermostatic model suggests the public reacts by moving in the opposite direction of government policies.
• Lower willingness to accept vulnerabilities is related to weaker perceptions of government members' integrity, abilities, and benevolence.
• Confidence in institutions affects adjustment or reaction.
• High trust aligns with government values; low trust seeks other supports.
• Hypothesis: Trust in government moderates the relationship between environmental spending and the prioritization of environmental protection versus economic growth.

Data and Methods

• Individual-level data from the European Values Study (EVS) and World Values Survey (WVS) from 1995–2019.
• Data is hierarchical, with respondents in 68 country-survey-years.
• Analysis covers 27 OECD countries with over 65,000 respondents.
• Two-level random intercept logistic multilevel models test the relationship between environmental spending and importance of the environment.
• Importance of the environment is the dichotomous dependent variable.
• Respondents chose between prioritizing environmental protection, even if it slows economic growth, or prioritizing economic growth, even if the environment suffers.
• Dummy-coded variable with 1 indicating a preference for the environment.
• Individual-level control variables include woman, age, partner, income, higher education, left-right scale, political interest, and trust in government.
• Environmental spending measures government spending on environmental protection as a percentage of GDP.
• Spending is related to activities that reduce pressures on the environment and make efficient use of natural resources.
• Level-2 controls include per capita GDP, unemployment (%), and democracy.
• Level-2 variables are measured for the year preceding the survey data.
• Two models are presented: one tests the direct relationship, and the other includes the interaction term between environmental spending and trust in government.
• Multilevel modeling accounts for variance in a dependent variable.
• Generalization occurs within sample theory for level-1 variables and within stochastic model theory for level-2 variables.
• Standard errors are calculated using corresponding N values.

Results

• Model 1 tests the direct effect of environmental spending on importance of the environment.
• Negative direct effect significant at the 5% level.
• No significant effect regarding trust in government.
• Women, the highly educated, and people with high income score higher on prioritizing the environment.
• Older individuals favor the economy; the same is true if you are living with a partner.
• Rightist political opinions are associated with a preference for the economy.
• More politically interested individuals favor the environment.
• Rich societies tend to prioritize the environment, and the more democratic the society, the more important the economy becomes.
• Model 2 tests the interaction effect using a term composed of trust in government and environmental spending.
• A person with low governmental trust is more likely to prioritize the economy when environmental spending is high.
• Where environmental spending is low, those with low trust will prioritize the environment.
• Citizens with high trust have little effect from environmental spending.
• Hypotheses 1 and 2 are supported by the results.

Discussion

• Investigates the relationship between government environmental spending and attitudes toward economic growth versus environmental concerns.
• Draws on research on the relationship between policy and attitudes, especially in welfare attitudes and regime types.
• Elite cues have an impact on public opinion on climate change.
• Positive feedback on environmental attitudes could come from government spending operating as an elite cue.
• Environmental spending might negatively correlate with attitudes that prioritize environmental protection over economic concerns.
• High environmental spending may accentuate the economic side of the environment-economy trade-off.
• Findings support the hypothesis that government environmental spending relates to attitudes towards the prioritization of environmental protection versus economic growth.
• The thermostatic idea suggests public opinions shift in the opposite direction of spending decisions.
• Speculation considers whether spending could trigger prioritizing economic growth among individuals with low trust in government.
• Negative relationship explained by government spending altering the balance of people's considerations.
• No signs of positive feedback or adjustment effects.
• Government policies could have powerful effects on expressed values of individuals with low trust.
• Government spending on environmental protection is not interpreted as elite cues.
• Open, direct signals of political standpoints can be more powerful elite signals.
• Spending can respond to greater environmental challenges.
• Extreme weather has little effect on attitudes.
• The prioritization of environmental protection falls in a middle area.
• Positive feedback or adjustment effects mainly apply to generalized attitudes and principles.
• Trust influences the relationship between spending and attitudes.
• Thermostatic effects appear stronger for low-trusting individuals.
• Heightened environmental spending may be more easily perceived as squandering, especially for those with low trust.

Conclusions

• Public support is critical for governments to strengthen future environmental activities.
• Governments' actions have feedback effects on attitudes.
• Increased environmental spending is negatively related to prioritizing environmental protection.
• The relationship is stronger for individuals with low levels of trust.
• Environmental spending can display economic consequences, especially for individuals with low trust.
• Government trust is important in the relationship between environmental spending and attitudes towards environmental protection.
• Democratic governments can strengthen elite cues to reinforce attitudes favoring environmental concerns.