Explaining support for renewable energy: commitments to self-sufficiency and communion

ABSTRACT

Across the political spectrum, people favour renewable energy. For political liberals, this support has been attributed to concern for the environment; in contrast, the bases of conservatives’ support are less clear. Derived from interviews with a diverse sample of households in Washington State, USA, and a vignette experiment with a representative sample of American households, results show that Democrats (liberals) and Republicans (conservatives) have different moral intuitions, with Democrats emphasizing communion and both Democrats and Republicans valuing self-sufficiency. These findings explain how politically polarized environmental attitudes can exist alongside a shared support for renewable energy. The study therefore contributes to the literature on environmental concern and behaviour, and has implications for policies aimed at increasing adoption of renewable energy as well as pro-environmental behaviour more broadly.

KEYWORDS:

• Renewable energy
• communion
• self-sufficiency
• moral intuitions
• political ideology
• environmental behaviour

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by NSF Grants (Grant numbers #1441357 and #1555980] to Christine Horne and a Washington State University New Faculty Seed Grant to Emily Huddart Kennedy.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. These patterns echo Eriksson’s (2018) argument that conservatives value agency more than liberals do, and liberals value communion more than conservatives, but that both groups value competence. It may be that self-sufficiency, as described here, signals competence in ways that matter to both conservatives and liberals.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [Grant number 1441357]; National Science Foundation [Grant number 1555980]; Washington State University [New Faculty Seed Grant].