Abstract

The main interest of the study is in the effects of strategic climate litigation on climate policy attitudes. Strategic litigation is an advocacy tool widely used by environmental activists, bringing or supporting high-profile court cases aimed at fostering legal and policy reform to enhance policy ambition on climate change. However, there is no scientific evidence of whether strategic litigation affects people’s attitudes towards the law or policy at stake. We aim to fill in this gap with our study. We conduct a randomized vignette experiment in order to examine the potential effect of strategic litigation on the acceptability and support for different environmental policies. We distinguish between passive acceptance and active participation and plan to measure the effect across both. To isolate the potential effect of strategic litigation, we employ three experimental treatments in a between-subjects vignette study, as well as a control group. We will compare the effect of strategic litigation to an alternative advocacy tool with similar features, a petition, and the effect of the two measures combined. To measure passive policy preferences, we use a conjoint experiment design. To elicit active willingness to support, we use a willingness to pay measurement.

Principal Investigators