When trusting the state is not enough: broader institutional trust and public support for energy transition policies

ABSTRACT

Existing research shows that public attitudes toward climate policies reflect political trust. Support for some policies may reflect not only trust in the state and its institutions, narrowly defined, but also other institutions. In this paper, we show how a broader measure of institutional trust that includes the state but reaches beyond it matters for public opinion toward energy transition policies, including just transition policies assisting workers who lose their jobs because of new environmental policies. Using data from Iceland, we find that trust in both state and non-state institutions correlates with attitudes toward three key energy transition policies: taxation of fossil fuels, subsidies for renewable energy, and just transition support for workers. More narrowly defined political trust, in contrast, correlates only with attitudes towards taxes. These results suggest that support for climate action, including a just energy transition, reflects overarching trust towards different institutions, including but not limited to the state.

KEYWORDS:

• Trust
• climate change
• energy transition
• public opinion
• just transition
• Iceland

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the University of Iceland, Doctoral Grant [number 1010-101364]. Special appreciation is extended to the Fulbright Program for supporting Sóllilja Bjarnadóttir’s fellowship at Harvard University, where much of the work on this manuscript was completed. The authors also express their gratitude to the participants of the Nordic Environmental Social Science Conference (NESS) and the ReNEW Nordic ESPAnet workshop for doctoral students and early career researchers for their useful discussion and valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this manuscript. We specifically thank Brynhildur Davíðsdóttir, Atli Hafþórsson, Heiður Hrund Jónsdóttir, Ómar Jóhannsson, Niklas Harring, Henner Busch, and Þorvarður Árnason for their comments on this manuscript. Malcolm Fairbrother acknowledges the financial support of the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation for his contribution of this research [number 2019.0196].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The ISSP data is available online, and additional Icelandic questions are available upon request.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2024.2381152

Notes

1. In the ISSP data set, there is also a measurement of trust in business and industry. Given the low correlation of this measure with the other trust indicators used in our study, we decided to exclude it from our main analysis. Nevertheless, we conducted the same analysis including this fourth item in the trust scale, and found that the results for our primary variables remained consistent.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation [2019.0196]; Doctoral Grant, University of Iceland [1010-101364].

Notes on contributors

Sóllilja Bjarnadóttir

Sóllilja Bjarnadóttir is a PhD student at the University of Iceland. She holds a Master’s degree in sociology, with research interests in environmental and climate change sociology. Her PhD project involves a quantitative analysis of how trust influences people’s support for climate policies across different national contexts.

Malcolm Fairbrother

Malcolm Fairbrother is a professor at Uppsala University and the University of Graz in Austria, and he works at the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm. His research focuses on the politics of environmental policymaking, economic globalization, and political and social trust.

Sigrún Ólafsdóttir

Sigrún Ólafsdóttir is a professor of sociology at the University of Iceland. Her research intersects medical, political, and cultural sociology, focusing on health inequalities, health care systems, social inequality, and mental health.

Jason Beckfield

Jason Beckfield is a professor of sociology at Harvard University. His research interests include stratification, health, and social policy in the context of economic and political globalization, with recent research concentrating on climate change and inequality.