This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Members of Parliament from the UK's three biggest political parties in the House of Commons significantly overestimate levels of public resistance to major policy proposals for tackling climate change, a University of Cambridge study suggests. The work is published in Communications Sustainability.
Researchers say it may be the first data-led evidence for a "spiral of silence" in Westminster, where skewed perceptions of public sentiment among politicians can reduce political support for a policy. The study's authors, from the university's El-Erian Institute of Behavioural Economics and Policy and the Cambridge Political Psychology Lab, surveyed 100 sitting MPs on how they think voters and other parliamentarians feel about carbon reduction policies and compared their estimates with public polling from earlier in the year. On making grants or loans for improved insulation available to all households with an energy efficiency rating of C or below, MPs collectively estimated public opposition to the policy at around 18%, more than three times the actual level of just 6%.
When asked about rejigging tax on products so that it varies according to environmental damage, MPs believed public opposition to be around 38%, almost double the 20% shown by polling of the British public. "MPs across parties who both support and oppose climate policies consistently overestimate public opposition," said study lead author Dr. Lisa-Maria Tanase, who conducted the work for her Ph.D. at Cambridge.
"This is likely to limit the range of what they consider to be politically feasible options for taking action on climate change." "Our findings cannot be explained away by wishful thinking by politicians or the projection of their own worldview. On average, even MPs who support a climate policy think the public is more opposed to it than it really is," Tanase said. "Politicians, like all of us, are often exposed to information environments that distort perceptions of public opinion.
Social and traditional media can disproportionately reflect particularly vocal segments of society rather than the full distribution of opinion." "We find a 'funhouse mirror' effect through which politicians see a distorted version of the public position on carbon reduction policies, associated with a lower willingness to promote these ideas," said Tanase, now a postdoctoral research associate at Cambridge's El-Erian Institute of Behavioural Economics and Policy. MPs also believed the UK electorate to be far more politically polarized over carbon reduction—or "net zero"—policies than it is, according to the study published in the journal Communications Sustainability. Polling showed a 12-percentage-point difference in support for the insulation and product tax policies between Labour and Conservative voters, but MPs estimated it at more than double that, at around 25 percentage points.
MPs predicted the difference between Liberal Democrat and Conservative voters on climate policies at 30 percentage points, when polling put it at just 14 points. Even the small two-point difference between Labour and Liberal Democrat voters was estimated at nearly five points by politicians. "A number of previous studies show that exaggerated perceptions of polarization can reduce the willingness of politicians to engage in cross-party dialogue," Tanase said.
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