Commitment failures are unlikely to undermine public support for the Paris agreement
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Author / Producer
Date
2019-03
Publication Type
Journal Article
ETH Bibliography
yes
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OPEN ACCESS
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Abstract
Success of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which is founded on nationally determined contributions (NDCs), hinges on whether domestic support for international environmental agreements would be undermined if countries that are crucial to the global effort fail to reduce their emissions. Here we find that citizens in China (n = 3,000) and the United States (n = 3,007) have strong preferences over the design of international climate agreements and contributions of other countries to the global effort. However, contrary to what standard accounts of international politics would predict, a survey-embedded experiment in which respondents were randomly exposed to different information on other countries’ behaviour showed that information on other countries failing to reduce their emissions does not undermine support for how international agreements are designed. While other factors still make large emission cuts challenging, these results suggest that the Paris approach per se is not posing a problem.
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Publication status
published
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Editor
Book title
Journal / series
Volume
9 (3)
Pages / Article No.
248 - 252
Publisher
Nature
Event
Edition / version
Methods
Software
Geographic location
Date collected
Date created
Subject
Climate-change policy; Energy and society; Politics; Psychology and behaviour
Organisational unit
03446 - Bernauer, Thomas / Bernauer, Thomas
Notes
It was possible to publish this article open access thanks to a Swiss National Licence with the publisher.
Funding
295456 - Sources of Legitimacy in Global Environmental Governance (EC)