Disempowered by Design: Political Efficacy and the Roots of Climate Skepticism

Abstract: Public resistance to climate action is typically explained by entrenched ideology, elite cueing, or information deficits. This paper challenges that causal ordering, proposing instead that ideological identity is not a starting point but a psychological adaptation to upstream political disempowerment. Drawing on national panel data and a supplemental framing experiment, we show that perceived external efficacy—the belief that political institutions are unresponsive—serves as a primary driver of both conservative identification and opposition to environmental regulation. Structural models reveal that nearly half the effect of efficacy on climate attitudes is mediated by ideology, and that this pathway is most pronounced under low institutional trust. By reorienting climate skepticism as a rational response to perceived democratic futility, rather than ignorance or partisanship, the study offers a general theory of belief formation with implications beyond the climate domain. Crucially, this reordering exposes the limits of standard interventions based on education or elite messaging. If identity is downstream of disempowerment, then efforts to persuade without restoring agency may misfire. Our findings suggest that restoring civic agency may be a necessary precondition for effective engagement on collective problems.

摘要：当前学界对公众抵制气候行动的成因解释通常落脚于固化意识形态、精英信号诱导或信息缺失。本文对这一因果排序提出挑战，转而主张意识形态认同并非行动的起点，而是对上游政治无权感的一种心理适应。本文依托全国面板数据与补充性框架实验，证实感知外部效能——即认为政治体制缺乏响应性的信念——是保守派身份认同与环境规制反对立场的核心驱动因素。结构模型分析显示，效能感对气候态度的影响中，近半数通过意识形态路径实现中介，且该效应在制度信任水平较低的群体中最为显著。本研究将气候怀疑论重新阐释为对感知到的民主无效性的理性回应，而非源于无知或党派偏见，由此提出了一套信念形成的一般性理论，其理论启示超越气候行动领域。尤为关键的是，这一重新梳理揭示了基于教育或精英信息传播的标准干预手段的局限性。若身份认同是无权感的下游结果，那么未恢复民众能动性的说服尝试可能适得其反。本研究结果表明，恢复公民能动性或为有效应对集体性公共问题的必要前提。