Trade-offs between redistribution and environmental protection: the role of information, ideology, and self-interest

Reducing economic inequality and combatting climate change are two strongly supported policy goals, but they will require significant public investments. In times of limited fiscal resources, governments struggle to raise additional revenues needed to finance both, making trade-offs between generally supported policy goals likely. But how do citizens decide if they have to choose between goals they support in principle, such as spending on efforts to reduce inequality and channeling resources toward initiatives to protect the environment? We discuss three major factors that help explain this choice – information, self-interest, and ideological orientation. Our experimental study shows that information is not a significant determinant of such choices, and that ideology is only important as long as there are no conflicting goals. Once citizens have to decide between redistribution and environmental protection, myopic self-interest trumps all other theoretically relevant variables mentioned in the literature.

降低经济不平等与应对气候变化是两项广受支持的政策目标，但二者均需投入巨额公共资金。当财政资源有限时，政府难以筹集足够的额外收入为两项政策同时提供资金支持，因此大概率需要在这些广受支持的政策目标之间做出权衡取舍。但当公民需要在原则上支持的目标之间做出抉择时——例如将资金用于降低不平等的举措，或是投向环境保护相关行动——他们是如何做出决策的？本研究探讨了影响此类决策的三大核心因素：信息、自身利益与意识形态倾向。我们的实验研究表明，信息并非此类决策的显著影响因素，而意识形态仅在不存在目标冲突的情况下才具有重要性。而当公民必须在收入再分配与环境保护之间做出抉择时，短视的自身利益便会凌驾于现有学术文献中提及的所有其他理论相关变量之上。