The role of compromise for climate policy support

Public support for climate policies is crucial as it helps effective policy implementation and can encourage the development of further climate mitigation policies (Drews & Van den Bergh, 2016; Feldman & Hart, 2018; McGrath & Bernauer, 2017; Smith & Leiserowitz, 2014). However, since concrete climate policies often lack public support, it is important to understand the motivational reasons behind climate policy support. While existing research looks primarily at individual emotions and reasoning as motivational factors, my paper aims to contribute insights that emerge once we conceive of decision-making on policy support as a form of compromise. Concretely, I wish to advance two related claims. First, I argue that when we are to decide on whether to support a concrete climate policy (e.g., in a political poll or in the context of casting a vote), it can be necessary to compromise intra-personally. This means that we compromise with ourselves, between values or principles that are important to us but that cannot be simultaneously realized (Lepora, 2012; Röttger & Zanetti, 2021). Secondly, I propose that acknowledging the role of intra-personal compromise for climate policy support allows for a more fine-grained picture of the motivations underlying individual decisions on that matter. This is so because intra-personal compromises follow their own motivational dynamics that can, by extension, influence policy support. The motivational dynamics of intra-personal compromise comprise two aspects in particular: emotions and moral conviction, i.e., "beliefs about fundamental issues of right and wrong" (Skitka et al., 2021). Work on moral conviction shows that if we hold a principle with moral conviction, we are unlikely to compromise on that principle (Delton et al., 2020; Ryan, 2017; Skitka, 2021). At the same time, emotion research shows that some emotions (e.g., fear, anxiety, hope) can increase and others (e.g., anger, contempt, disgust) reduce our willingness to compromise (MacKuen et al., 2010). This means that even if we hold a principle with moral conviction, we might still be willing to compromise on that principle if we experience compromise-enhancing emotions such as hope or anxiety. Thus, while we might predict an individual to oppose a climate policy based on their moral convictions, they might turn out to support it due to their (emotional) motivation to compromise. And vice versa, an individual that we might predict to support a climate policy might turn out to oppose it due to the dynamics inherent to intra-personal compromise. Taking these dynamics into account thus allows for a more fine-grained picture of the individual motivations underlying climate policy support.