Crisis as an opportunity for climate protection?
Sebastian Koos and Adrian Rinscheid studied whether the public's willingness to support climate measures is influenced by crises and their consequences. They based their research on the two major crises of the past few years: The COVID-19 pandemic with the associated restrictions on individual liberties, as well as the Russian invasion of Ukraine with the resulting rise in energy prices.
The authors from the Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality" assumed that acute crises could influence public support for climate action. Based on a survey experiment with more than 5000 persons in Germany, they show that both crises have not reduced support for climate protection. On the contrary: The constraints associated with the pandemic actually increased support, especially among people who are deeply concerned about the climate. Koos' and Rinscheid's article and research data are freely available.
The article (doi: 10.1038/s43247-023-00755-z) has been published open access in the journal Communications, Earth & Environment and is available for download.
The research data and code for the study (doi: 10.7910/DVN/3VPRGG) are freely available in the Harvard Dataverse.