Work

Morality and climate policy attitudes

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: This paper studies the moral roots of climate policy attitudes. We fielded a survey with a representative sample in the US to study the predictive power of moral universalism in explaining heterogeneity in specific climate policy attitudes. Our results reveal that universalism is significantly related to support for various policy measures that prevail in current policy debates in most countries, including domestic policies such as a carbon tax and a green infrastructure program, as well as international policies such as international burden-sharing. Supporting evidence comes from simple bystander allocation decisions in which respondents are asked to decide “who should pay” to fight climate change or to mitigate the adverse consequences of global warming. Open-text elicitations further corroborate these results and identify moral universalism as a key aspect of how people reason about climate policies.

Source: Journal of Public Economics

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2026.105801

Authors: Lasse S. Stötzer, Florian Zimmermann

Institutions: European Commission, Directorate-General Joint Research Centre, Max Planck Institute for Mathematics

Language: English

Topic: Climate Change Policy and Economics

Subfield: Economics and Econometrics

Field: Economics, Econometrics and Finance

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Climate action

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $4,510