Content vs. packaging: the importance of the sender for the acceptance of climate measures

What effect does the origin of climate policy measures have on their acceptance? This question was investigated experimentally in a BFH research project. The differences found are considerable and show that acceptance of climate protection measures does indeed depend on their origin.

As part of the “Sufficiency & Politics” research project, a representative survey was conducted to examine how the Swiss population assesses various sufficiency measures. Sufficiency measures aim to contribute to a change in behaviour and consumption patterns that lead to lower resource consumption and thus contribute to greater sustainability. Sufficiency refers to the principle of reducing resource consumption through behavioural changes and reduced consumption.

One experiment in the project investigated the effect of naming the originator of a particular proposal (i.e. who the proposal came from) on the level of support it received. The breakdown according to the political voting behaviour of the respondents is particularly interesting. What difference does it make to approval whether a proposed measure comes from one’s own political camp or that of one’s opponents?

In the experiment, survey participants were asked whether they would agree to the introduction of progressive electricity tariffs (i.e. the price per kilowatt hour increases with increasing electricity consumption) or not. This proposal has not yet been widely discussed by interest groups or political parties. This means that there has not yet been a public debate on the issue, and it can be assumed that most respondents do not yet have a firm opinion on the matter.

The survey participants were either assigned to a control group, which was asked the question in a neutral form, i.e. without reference to a specific originator, or to one of five treatment groups. The treatment groups were each given one of the following senders: the “WWF”, the ” Economiesuisseumbrella organisation”, the “SVP”, “science (ETH)” or “a citizens’ council”. There are 305 to 333 responses per group, which allows for a reliable analysis. The distribution of respondents across the six groups was random.[1]

Question wording in the control group and in the “SVP” treatment group

Control group:

One possible measure to promote more efficient energy use is progressive electricity tariffs. With these, the price per kilowatt hour would become more expensive the more you consume.

Treatment group “SVP”:

The Swiss People’s Party (SVP) proposes progressive electricity tariffs as a possible measure to promote more efficient energy use. Under this system, the price per kilowatt hour would increase the more electricity is consumed.

The survey also asked respondents which party they felt closest to.[2] This makes it possible to determine whether and in what direction party political affinity is related to the differently presented authorship of the proposed sufficiency measure.

The results presented in Table 1 focus on the question of what influence the mention of the SVP has on the acceptance of progressive electricity tariffs. The values represent the percentage of agreement with the proposed measure. The first column with the control group, i.e. with the question without mentioning a specific origin, shows the expected picture: the lowest level of approval is found among SVP voters (only 13%), while the highest level of approval is recorded among Green Party supporters (over 87%).

The relatively large difference between Green Party voters and those of the SP (with “only” 68% approval) can be interpreted to mean that the measure has both an environmental and a socio-political component, namely that energy costs would rise equally for people on low incomes and those on high incomes. This aspect is probably more important to SP voters than to Green Party voters.

But back to the effect of naming the SVP as the originator on the acceptance of the measure: in this case, approval among SVP voters shoots up by a full 40 percentage points. And there is also increased approval among the other bourgeois parties (Centre, FDP) (by almost 13 percentage points among FDP voters).

However, these very pronounced effects are offset by equally strong effects, albeit in the opposite direction, among voters of the GLP, SP and the Greens. Among these voters, approval falls simply because the SVP is named as the originator of the proposal; most strongly among the SP (minus 19 percentage points) and somewhat weaker among the Greens, by more than 15 percentage points.

Table 1: Difference from the approval rating of the control group by party affiliation (in percentage points)

Reading example: Respondents who describe themselves as voters for the centrist party show a 10.3 percentage point higher approval rating when the SVP is named as the originator of the proposal.

What conclusions can be drawn from this experiment for practical application?

1. The parties’ communication clearly continues to exert a strong influence on the political attitudes of citizens. Given the ongoing discussions about dissolving party loyalties, and especially in times of digital media change, this is not a matter of course and is good news, at least for the party headquarters.
2. At the same time, the results are evidence of political polarisation. A proposal is considered good or bad by a significant proportion of voters simply because it is (supposedly) promoted by a particular party. The proposal is not judged on its content, but on its authorship.

However, the results should not be overinterpreted, as the respondents in the experiment were not able to examine the proposed measures in depth and, of course, there was no embedding in real political reporting. Nevertheless, the results shed light on the criteria used to evaluate political proposals and may well be relevant for practical campaign work. How political measures can contribute to a more sustainable approach to digitally-related energy consumption, for example, also depends on who proposes them.

[1] With regard to ethical standards, the respondents in the five treatment groups were informed afterwards that this had been an experiment and that they had been given fictitious senders.

[2] A total of 4,118 eligible voters from German- and French-speaking Switzerland took part in the survey. The data was subsequently weighted according to age, gender and party preference.