Climate risk perceptions and policy ambition

This article investigates the factors which influence national climate change policy ambition, as they are reflected in states' commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in United National Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations. The paper specifically investigates the relationship between policy ambition and public perceptions of the threat posed by climate change employing a 140-country nationally representative dataset of risk perceptions conducted in 2019. The analysis shows that while public opinion does correlate overall with policy ambition across countries, in a sizable minority of countries, public threat perceptions are high while policy ambition is low. In these countries, climate change policy is found to be malign in two senses: first, those policies are not consistent with achieving the global public good of climate change control; and second, in the sense that policies are not aligned with the level of concern of citizens about this issue

Business · Climate change · Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Greenhouse gas · Natural resource economics · Negotiation · Perception · Policy studies · Political economy · Political economy of climate change · Political science · Politics · Public economics · Public opinion · Public policy · Climate Change and Sustainable Development · Climate Change Communication and Perception · Climate Change Policy and Economics · Law · Psychology · Social Acceptance of Renewable Energy · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance · Geology