What determines the attitude-behavior link when voting on renewable energy policies? The roles of problem perception and policy design

This chapter sheds light on the paradox between the general perception of climate change related problems and resistance to measures addressing it, namely the support of renewable energy policies at the ballot box. Using conjoint analyses, we investigate the role of climate concern and problem priority for individual support of proposed policies, whereby we vary their design. This enables us not only to estimate levels of support, but also how these depend on the interaction between individual attitudes and policy characteristics. We find that the attitude-behavior link is strongest for respondents with the most clear-cut attitudes, i.e., those who do not believe in human-induced climate change, on the one hand, and those who strongly prioritize climate and energy-related issues, on the other. Conversely, for the large majority of citizens who are somewhat concerned about climate change but do not perceive related issues as a priority, the attitude-behavior link is more strongly dependent on cost-benefit considerations with respect to concrete policy designs.