Predicting support of climate policies by using a protection motivation model

Abstract

Taiwan aims to reduce its estimated 2020 CO₂ emissions by 45%. Attaining this goal will require strong policies and public support. In this study, a psychological model was tested to predict how Taiwanese citizens would support ten policies that mitigate or adapt to climate change. The model is an expansion of Protection Motivation Theory (PMT [Rogers, R. W. (1983). Cognitive and physiological processes in fear-based attitude change: A revised theory of protection motivation. In J. Cacioppo & R. Petty (Eds.), Social psychophysiology: A sourcebook (pp. 153–176). New York, NY: Guilford]) involving responsibility and the subjective effectiveness of alternative solutions (SEAS) as additional variables. Data were collected after conducting two surveys in Taiwan that involved a total of 394 respondents. The results indicated that perceived responsibility and SEAS predicted the support of only one to three of the policies. Regarding the PMT variables, severity and vulnerability did not affect the support of almost all policies. Policy support was primarily affected by the other three PMT variables: self-efficacy, response efficacy, and relative benefit. These three variables significantly affected most policies, accounting for 34–73% of the variance in public support. This suggests that PMT facilitates understanding of public support for climate policies.

Keywords:

• adaptation policy
• climate change policy
• policy support
• responsibility attribution

Acknowledgements

I thank my student Chun-Chieh Yang for data collection, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.

Funding

This study was financially supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (grant no. NSC 100-2410-H-110-053).