Proceedings of 9th International Business and Social Science Research Conference
6 - 8 January, 2014, Novotel World Trade Centre, Dubai, UAE, ISBN: 978-1-922069-41-2
Explaining the General Public Support for Climate Change
Mitigation Policy– An Analytical Framework
Hieu Dinh Ha and Rajendra Mulye
Abstract
Adverse predictions of climate change have prompted the Australian
government to take a wide range of mitigation actions to reduce factors
believed to contribute to climate change. However, the general public
support for initiatives such as the carbon tax has been limited. One month
following implementation of the carbon tax and financial support packages,
only 36% of Australian public were found to support the carbon tax while
59% opposed it. (Nielsen 2012). Nevertheless, the public’s engagement in
climate change mitigation is important as they contribute to two of the
largest sources of carbon emission either directly by fossil fuel combustion
or indirectly by electricity usage (Stern 2006; Australian Government 2008).
The lack of support from this important stakeholder in combating climate
change is therefore problematic and consequently, the topic of explaining
consumer support for climate change mitigation policies is both policy
relevant and scholarly attractive.
There is general agreement in the literature that the level of public support
for climate change mitigation policies is mitigated by the public’s perceived
impact of climate change on their and other society members’ quality of life
as well as on the biosphere (Fransson & Gärling 1999; O’Connor et al.
1999; O’Connor et al. 2002; Bostrom et al. 2012). However, the literature
has largely ignored the underlying structure which forms the basis of the
general public’s perceived impact of climate change and its relation to their
support of specific climate change mitigation policies. Furthermore, the
questions as to why the general public has different levels of support for
different climate change mitigation policies and what factors influence
support for climate change mitigation policies has not been adequately
addressed. Moreover, the role of public’s evaluation of climate change
mitigation policies has not been adequately studied although it is an
important driver of public support for climate change policies. We address
this gap in the literature and propose a model to explain the general
public’s support for climate change mitigation policies. The model employs
three broad constructs based on three dominant theories in the literature.
The constructs explored are perceived impact of climate change (PCI),
perceived effectiveness (PEP) and feasibility (PFP) of climate change
mitigation policies to explain CCPS. In addition to the direct impacts of PCI,
PEP to CCPS which have been repeatedly confirmed in the literature
(Baldassare & Katz 1992; Fransson & Gärling 1999; O’Connor et al.
1999,2002; Bostrom et al. 2012), the proposed model contributes to the
literature by proposing the effect of PFP, which would be another aspect of
the general public’s evaluation toward climate change mitigation policies, to
the CCPS construct. Highlighting the moderating roles of PEP and PFP,
this paper contributes to the literature in the way that it suggests another
possible mechanism that PEP and PFP might impact the level of the
general public support for climate change mitigation policies. The set of
propositions and the proposed model are as follows:
__________________
Hieu Dinh Ha, and Rajendra Mulye
School of Economics, Finance and Marketing, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
1|P a g e