People who express pro-environmental attitudes in their everyday life nevertheless may not support environmental political parties, according to a new study. The analysis leverages a large European public opinion survey and machine learning techniques to describe the interconnections—and discrepancies—between people’s attitudes and political choices when it comes to the environment.
Fighting climate change requires stronger environmental policies. So there’s an urgent need to understand what makes the public support environmental policies.
Most studies on this topic so far have been piecemeal—looking at what determines support for green political parties, what drives pro-environmental behavior, and so on. The new study tackles the whole complex stew of these features all at once.
Researchers analyzed answers to climate change-related questions in the 2016 European Social Survey (ESS) from more than 27,000 adults across 18 European countries. They used these answers to assess people’s general beliefs about the importance of caring for nature and the environment, climate change awareness, engagement in climate-friendly personal habits, and support for various climate policies.
They used machine-learning algorithms to probe the links between these attitudes and 62 different variables drawn from the ESS concerning individuals’ characteristics and attitudes. These variables, a much broader list than previous studies have considered, ranged from socio-demographic and economic characteristics to engagement in politics, civic, and social life to attitudes about personal safety and religion.
Then the researchers used the same methods to analyze connections between these characteristics and people’s voting behavior. Rather than just considering whether a person voted for a Green party, they used an independent database to classify different European political parties based on their support for environmentalism, as well as left-right political orientation, degree of populism, and degree of cosmopolitanism (reflecting traditional vs. libertarian beliefs).
People who believe it is generally important to care for nature and the climate and people who have a high degree of climate change awareness also tend to be engaged in ecologically conscious personal behavior, the researchers report in the journal Ecological Economics.
But these two characteristics do not necessarily predict people who support eco-friendly policies. Instead, they predict people who are more involved in civic life and who tend not to support populist parties.
The results reveal a “decoupling between personal and political dimensions of pro-environmental attitudes,” the researchers write. “Voting for pro-environmental or Green parties is primarily associated with individuals who strongly support eco-friendly policies.”
This means that simply getting people to act in an eco-friendly manner in everyday life won’t necessarily translate into them supporting environmental policies or voting for environmental parties. Public awareness campaigns can’t simply promote eco-friendly habits and assume the rest will follow.
Older individuals tend to engage in pro-environmental behavior and express sensitivity and care for nature. But they do not necessarily vote for pro-environmental political parties. This may be because they are used to voting for other parties, or because when election time comes other issues take priority, the researchers suggest.
Economic issues may also prevent people from translating their support for pro-environmental policies into votes for pro-environmental parties, they say.
However, the study does not provide a causal analysis. Instead, it seeks to describe characteristics of people who hold various attitudes and voting preferences. This can then help develop hypotheses about causal relationships to test later. “By uncovering (unexpected) patterns in the data, it may bring to the surface overlooked explanations that can then be considered for further investigation,” the researchers write.
Source: D’Eccelsiis E.A.R. et al. “Exploring the multifaceted relationship between environmental attitudes and political voting.” Environmental Economics 2025.
Image: AI-generated ©Anthropocene Magazine.
