New research by University of Oxford researchers from the Institute of New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, Saïd Business School and Smith School of Enterprise and Environment finds that policymakers, politicians and other policy officials greatly underestimate the public’s willingness to contribute to climate action.
The findings come after recent clamours for a reset on climate policies from leading political figures due to a claimed lack of public support.
Building on prior research that found that 69% of the general public support climate action, the new paper shows that policymakers surveyed by the researchers estimated this figure at just 37%.
Dr Ximeng Fang, lead author and Research Fellow at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, said:
‘It’s not just policymakers - our findings suggest that individuals playing a diversity of roles at international environmental governance meetings could be operating under the assumption of a weaker public mandate for climate action than reality’.
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