Attitudes toward climate change mitigation policies: a review of measures and a construct of policy attitudes

Research on policy support or public acceptability of climate change policies is proliferating. There is, however, a great diversity in how these evaluative responses have been defined, operationalized, and measured across studies. In order to shed some light on this subject, we reviewed 118 studies published over the last 15 years aiming at measurement of policy acceptability, acceptance, support, and other responses to climate change mitigation policies. We found that conceptual vagueness and weak theoretical embedding are pervasive in the field, which leads to uncertainty over what is being measured, ambiguity of policy recommendations, and difficulties in comparing empirical results. In response, we propose a construct of policy attitudes as an overarching concept comprising the diversity of measures and constructs already in use. The purpose of the construct is to serve as a common basis for operationalization and survey design. In order to inform policy makers, researchers should be clear in how they formulate surveys with a focus on questions of importance to research and policy-making. Key policy insights Acceptability, acceptance, and support are defined as distinct and possibly empirically distinguishable classes of responses evaluating a policy proposal. These responses are expressions of underlying policy attitudes. People may respond to policies in other ways as well, including lack of interest. There is no popularity threshold for a policy to be safe to implement, but instead it is a matter of identifying the conditions of policy support or other responses. Results obtained using different measures of mitigation policy attitudes vary widely with respect to the characteristics of the policy in question and the measured response. Thus, great care must be taken when designing surveys and interpreting their results.