UK politicians ‘significantly overestimate’ public opposition to policies designed to address climate change, a new study by the University of Cambridge has found.
The study, which was led by Dr Lisa-Maria Tanase of Cambridge’s El-Erian Institute of Behavioural Economics and Policy and the Cambridge Political Psychology Lab, involved 100 sitting MPs from the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties, and revealed a ‘gulf’ between public and political perceptions on environmental issues.
“MPs across parties who both support and oppose climate policies consistently overestimate public opposition,” commented study lead author Dr Lisa-Maria Tanase, who conducted the work for her PhD at Cambridge. “This is likely to limit the range of what they consider to be politically feasible options for taking action on climate change.”
Comparing perceptions
The study compared MP’s perceptions of public attitudes with nationally-representative polling on several key issues – for example, on the availability of grants for home insulation to households with an energy efficiency rating of C or below, MPs estimated public opposition at about 18%, more than three times the actual level of 6%.
Elsewhere, MPs believed public opposition to a tax on products based on their environmental impact to be at around 38%, compared with an actual figure of 20%.
“On average, even MPs who support a climate policy think the public is more opposed to it than it really is,” Tanase added. “Politicians, like all of us, are often exposed to information environments that distort perceptions of public opinion. Social and traditional media can disproportionately reflect particularly vocal segments of society rather than the full distribution of opinion.”
Political divisions
The research also examined perceptions of political divisions over climate measures, with MPs estimating that differences between Labour and Conservative voters on certain policies were about 25 percentage points, while polling showed a 12-point difference. The perceived gap between Liberal Democrat and Conservative voters was estimated at 30 points, compared with 14 points in polling.
According to the researchers, this ‘false polarisation’ tended to overestimate the climate policy scepticism of Conservative voters.
“Environmentally supportive Conservative voters may end up feeling misrepresented if politicians consistently exaggerate how different their attitudes are from those of other voters,” Tanase said. Read more here.
