Inequality and the (Climate) Preference–Behavior Gap

Funded by: ST4TE, a Horizon 2020 programme. 

The project investigates whether and through which mechanisms inequality shapes preferences for climate policies and climate behavior. We address this question by designing and implementing a large-scale online experiment (nearly 5,000 participants) across five European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom). We show that the exposure to inequality increases support for green climate policies but decreases the willingness to take actions against climate change. Specifically, participants exposed to inequality are more in favour of introducing a flying tax and a green climate fund to finance clean energy in low-income countries but they are less willing contribute time and effort toward the collective goal of environmental protection. This puzzle seems to be explained by the fact that inequality shapes these outcomes through different trajectories. For climate policy preferences, our findings show that participants exposed to inequality clearly identified the wealthy individuals and the government as responsible for environmental problems while also shows an increase in moral universalism. In contrast, for climate-related behaviour, mediators play a limited role, while inequality has a direct effect on the willingness to take action against climate change. Overall, these results have important policy implications, as rising disparities may influence the social foundations necessary for the design and implementation of effective climate action.