Commitment failures are unlikely to undermine public support for the Paris agreement
Open accessAbstract
Success of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which is founded on Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), hinges on whether domestic support for international environmental agreements would be undermined if countries that are crucial to the global effort fail to reduce their emissions. Here we find that citizens in China (n = 3000) and the United States (n = 3007) have strong preferences over the design of international climate agreements, and contributions of other countries to the global effort. However, contrary to what standard accounts of international politics would predict, a survey-embedded experiment in which respondents were randomly exposed to different information on other countries' behavior showed that information on other countries failing to reduce their emissions does not undermine support for how international agreements are designed. While other factors still make large emission cuts challenging, these results suggest that the Paris approach per se is not posing a problem.
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ML has revealed that cross-cultural support for international climate programs is not reduced, even when individuals are exposed to information about other countries' climate behavior.
“Similarly, ML has revealed that cross-cultural support for international climate programs is not reduced, even when individuals are exposed to information about other countries' climate behavior [65].”
From Tackling climate change with machine learning (2023) · cites this paper as [65]
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- Authors
- Beiser-McGrath, L. F., & Bernauer, T.
- Affiliations
- ETH Zurich (CH)
- Venue
- Nature Climate Change
- Published
- 2019-02-25
- Volume
- 9
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 248-252
- ISSN
- 1758-678X (ISSN-L)
- 1758-6798
- PMC
- PMC6420133
- OpenAlex
- W2916293481
- Cited by
- 70
- References
- 34
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 12.48
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature Climate Change (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- London School of Economics and Political Science Research Online (London School of Economics and Political Science) (acceptedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- London School of Economics and Political Science Research Online (London School of Economics and Political Science) (submittedVersion)
- Repository for Publications and Research Data (ETH Zurich) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- ETH Zürich Research Collection
- Funders
- Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich
- FP7 Ideas: European Research Council (295456)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Climate Change Policy and Economics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Climate Change Communication and Perception
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law › International Environmental Law and Policies
- Keywords
- Paris Agreement, public support for climate policy, Nationally Determined Contributions, climate change mitigation, international climate agreements, information effects, China, United States, international cooperation
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