Abstract
This paper investigates the variations in public mood pertaining to climate skepticism and attempts to empirically assess whether economic recessions or partisanship help explain aggregate-level trends and movements across a 16-year time horizon. Public survey data from the iPoll and Gallup Organization were used to construct the Climate Change Skeptic Index (CCSI) that served as a proxy to capture public opinion trends in skepticism across the U.S. A two-part vector autoregressive model suggests that while economic recessions might be causally linked to climate skepticism, partisanship plays a more influential role in explaining it over time. The key result is that holding all included variables constant, anti-climate change statements by Republican Congresspersons made three quarters ago raise the CCSI by 0.17 percentage points on average in the current quarter.
Recommended Citation
Sambatur, Abhishek S.
(2019)
"Recessions Or Partisanship: What Explains Climate Skepticism in the U.S.?,"
Undergraduate Economic Review: Vol. 16:
Iss.
1, Article 9.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/uer/vol16/iss1/9