Written evidence submitted by Lisa-Marie Tanase, University of Cambridge PhD Researcher in the Political Psychology Lab, and El-Erian Institute of Behavioural Economics and Policy (BSE0053)

I am a Lisa-Maria Tanase, PhD researcher at the Cambridge El-Erian Institute of Behavioural Economics and Policy and the Political Psychology Lab. Exploring how politicians gauge public support for climate policies, and how we can help them improve the accuracy of their perceptions of public policy support vs opposition has been the focus of my research and PhD work for the past few years. I hope this submission can offer helpful insights to support your inquiry on Building Support for the Energy Transition. The evidence shared speaks to key questions raised by the Committee, such as: How should the Government engage the public more positively in support of Net Zero? What communication strategies can improve public engagement? How might perceptions of public sentiment within Parliament be made more accurate to better guide policy and communication?  

This submission draws on my doctoral research exploring public opinion and misperceptions of support for climate policies, both among citizens and within Parliament. Overall, it highlights the importance of clearly communicating existing social norms to encourage support for Net Zero and addressing common perception gaps that may fuel collective inaction. Public misperceptions matter. Research shows individuals consistently underestimate how much others care about climate change, which can discourage collective action. These social and psychological dynamics play a crucial role in shaping attitudes toward climate policies. In particular, this submission presents data from a novel, unpublished experimental study I led as part of my PhD, with the support of my PhD supervisors Dr Lee de-Wit, Professor Lucia Reisch and Dr Malte Dewies, through the YouGov survey panel of MPs, involving 100 current UK Members of Parliament. Key findings include:

• MPs significantly underestimate the proportion of the public that supports Net Zero policies, including an energy efficiency measure.
• MPs overestimate how much public support drops when policy costs are made salient.
• MPs overestimate partisan polarisation, particularly underestimating support for climate policies among Conservative voters relative to Labour or Lib Dem voters.

As part of my PhD Research, I also conducted a study with over 600 UK residents, showing they also significantly misperceive actual percentages of policy support within the UK Public, and a study of 600 Belgian politicians with the support of Dr Karolin Soontjens showing Belgian Politicians and UK politicians exhibited very similar trends of underestimations when making their guess on public support for climate policies.

I was awarded the Policy Innovation Grant by the Cambridge Centre for Science and Policy, which enabled me to conduct my study with 100 UK MPs, but also to co-organise a policy roundtable under Chatham House Rule at the Royal Society on 24 March 2024, attended by policymakers, a couple of MPs/ Lords, and parliamentary staff including the Thematic Research Lead in Parliament Dr Andy Russell. The event aimed to address precisely the challenges raised in the Committee’s inquiry, focusing on how policymakers can better understand and engage the public in support of Net Zero. This workshop was developed in collaboration with senior researchers from the University of Cambridge El-Erian Institute of Behavioural Economics and Policy and the Political Psychology Lab, alongside official policy partners: the Parliament Office for Science and Technology, the Cambridge Centre for Science and Policy, and the Behavioural Insights Team.

The event was structured around two goals: 1) Improving policymakers’ understanding of levels and drivers of public support and opposition to Net Zero policies and 2) Providing evidence-based tools and framing strategies to support confident, effective public policy communication.

The report summarises key findings from both the research and the Royal Society roundtable discussion. I hope it can serve as a useful contribution to the Committee’s ongoing work, and I would be happy to provide further details if of interest.

1.Social norms to encourage climate policy support: addressing inaccurate public perceptions and collective inertia:

When considering methods to increase public acceptance of green policies, it can be helpful to address the widespread misperceptions among the public about climate support.

• One of my PhD studies conducted with over 600 UK residents, showed they also significantly misperceive actual percentages of climate policy support within the UK Public.

My findings fit within a growing body of research suggesting that underestimation of public support for climate policies is a widespread and recurring pattern, observed not only among political representatives but also across the general public1 where public support for climate policies is often underestimated by 20% or more, to the extent that researchers describe this as a ‘False Social Reality’, where a majority of citizens who support climate policies mistakenly believe they are in the minority. 

   This evidence has implications for communication strategies on building support for the green transition:

Social factors play key roles in human behaviour. Individuals tend to underestimate how much others worry about climate change which may inhibit them from taking collective climate action2. According to behavioural literature, there is a phenomenon known as pluralistic ignorance3, where individuals erroneously believe they are part of a minority who are willing to take action on climate issues, and who assume the majority are unwilling. This belief contributes directly to collective inertia, encapsulated in the rationale: "Why should I make efforts when others won’t?" To combat this, public engagement efforts could incorporate strategies that communicate clear social norms supportive of climate policies, including recent polling data and the dynamic norm, data showing increasing support for government climate action over recent years.

• My PhD research experiment found that exposing participants to polling data statistics, showing actual levels of support for a range of climate policies, significantly reduced underestimation of support in others when participants were asked to guess support levels for a new set of unseen climate policies, following exposure to this social norm intervention.

This social norm intervention works quite effectively, consisting of visualisation of the % of public supporting vs opposing specific policies, and the % of voters from key parties willing to support these policies.

2.Improving the accuracy of UK Politicians’ perceptions of Public Support for Climate Policies: findings from a novel study with 100 current UK MPs

Exploring how politicians gauge public support for climate policies, and how we can help them improve the accuracy of their perceptions of public policy support vs opposition has been the focus of my research and PhD work for the past few years.

• Early on in my PhD, I conducted interviews with 10 former UK MPs to help ensure my subsequent experimental studies could then be designed to reflect the realities of the challenges politicians navigate on climate issues. When I asked them what they think is the main barrier to climate policy progress, the key barrier the majority of former MPs reported to me is that public support and acceptance for such policies is simply lacking. Many former MPs I spoke to expressed they felt constrained in how much they could advocate for more ambitious policies because they believe that the proportion of people who would approve of such measures is too small. Existing research4 also suggests that when leaders believe that advocating for ambitious policies carries a high political risk, they may feel limited in their ability to advocate for them due to expected electoral backlash. Hence, underestimations of public support could be adding unnecessary weight to an already difficult challenge. Polling data from robust sources consistently indicates that many climate policies receive support from the majority of the public, suggesting that politicians may underestimate the popularity of these policies. If one of the barriers to stronger climate action is not actual public opposition, but the perception of opposition, then this a challenge of getting the public engaged and on board may be more addressable than previously thought.
• The idea is also that if MPs can have access to the most accurate possible understanding of where the public truly stands on key policy issues, this could improve public trust. Even when taking a leadership stance that does not align at all with majority opinion, public trust is more likely to be maintained when politicians can demonstrate they are aware of where the public stands and clearly explain why certain policy decisions are made.
• To investigate if current UK politicians tend to underestimate policy support within the public, I conducted an experiment with 100 UK MPs from the current parliament, through the YouGov MP panel. UK MPs in the study were asked to estimate the percentage of UK public survey respondents who would support specific climate policy proposals. The underestimation score specifically measures the degree to which participants underestimated public support, and it is calculated as:

True % of public support provided by IPSOS polling data − Estimated % of public support.

The IPSOS polling data comprises a representative sample of 4,201 adults aged 16+ in the UK between 18th and 24th April 2024 and presents % of policy support in the UK public, and specific party voters. The full IPSOS Net Zero Living Report is available at:

https://ipsos-insight-llc.foleon.com/ipsos-thinks/net-zero-living-2024/

Average underestimation of public support for climate policies within 100 UK MPs

MPs consistently underestimated public support for all four climate policies presented to them, with underestimation gaps between true and estimated support ranging from over 7% to 16%. The largest underestimation occurred for policies that involved a financial cost element.

Underestimation of public support by policy and voters for which support is estimated

•                  UK MPs in our study appear to overestimate the extent of political polarisation among voters of different parties regarding climate policy support.        
• MPs’ underestimation of public support was significantly larger when MPs were asked to estimate the support of Conservative voters compared to when estimating support among Labour voters, Liberal Democrat voters, or the general public.

Why This Matters: Such false polarisation which my study identified can have downstream effects—it has been shown in the literature to increase pessimism about the possibility of constructive cross-party dialogue and to discourage MPs from openly engaging with opposing parties on climate issues.5,6  This could also lead to specific segments of voters feeling misunderstood by policy-makers, if these voters’ policy views are misperceived. 

Recommendation for Communication Strategies: To counter this, communication efforts around Net Zero should include:

• Evidence-led reassurance that climate support exists across the political spectrum.
• Framing that avoids reinforcing stereotypes about what “typical” voters from different parties support or oppose. 
• Ensuring that voters across party lines feel accurately represented and understood can help prevent alienation and strengthen support for the energy transition across the electorate.           

Importantly, MPs also over-estimate largely how much support drops once a policy’s cost is explained

• IPSOS polling data also offers evidence of the percentage of public support when the policy is described to survey respondents by explicitly highlighting their costs and inconveniences.
• When told that members of the public received in their survey a clear description of the personal costs of the climate policies presented to them, MPs also significantly underestimated the percentage of people supporting these policies amongst the general public.

Engagement Implication:
Improving MPs’ and policymakers’ understanding of how the public responds to cost information can help foster more confident and honest public engagement. Clear messaging that links costs to long-term benefits, fairness protections, and wider economic opportunities may be more effective than assumed.

Those who believed public support was lowest were least willing to consider promoting the policy in public debate or in conversations with parliamentary colleagues.

In this study of UK MPs, statistical analysis showed that MPs' perceived percentage of public support for climate policies significantly predicted their intention to speak up—beyond the effect of their own personal support for a policy. I believe this is one of the most important findings from the study, as it confirms what the existing literature suggests about the negative impact of politicians underestimating public support for climate policies. This dynamic is described in the literature as the “Spiral of Silence”: a cycle in which the less support individuals believe exists, the less likely they are to speak up—leading to fewer opportunities to engage, fewer visible expressions of support, and a stronger perception of public apathy or lack of collective power. Similarly in my study, politicians who believe there is little public support appear more concerned about the risks of promoting climate policies and feel more constrained in how much they can advocate for climate policies.

3. Royal Society Policy Roundtable take aways:

Increasing perception of collective efficacy to improve public support for climate policies:

Related to this, is the important concept of collective efficacy. Climate change and related global environmental issues are examples of common good dilemmas as defined in Behavioural Economics. This means that these large-scale global problems are only solvable by collective efforts and not by individuals. As a result, considerations of collective efficacy (i.e., are we as a group capable of dealing with this problem?) play a prominent role in motivating individuals to engage in pro-environmental action. This theme emerged during the roundtable discussion we hosted at The Royal Society with policy-makers across Parliament and government, and behavioural experts, where a Speaker noted that climate policies are more likely to gain public acceptance if they are seen as actually effective in mitigating climate change.

The discussion also highlighted a key knowledge gap: many people are misinformed or unaware of which actions are most effective. For example, people tend to overestimate the impact of actions like recycling, while underestimating the impact of dietary choices such as reducing meat and dairy consumption.

Engagement Implication:          

To increase support for Net Zero policies, communications can aim to:                                                   - Boost perceptions of collective efficacy by highlighting evidence of progress, showcasing the real-world impact of collective action, and communicating the large proportion of citizens who support these measures, helping reduce the sense of being alone in one’s efforts.                                                                                                                                               - Close the knowledge gap by clearly communicating which behaviours and policies are most effective in reducing emissions.

The role of perceived policy fairness in encouraging public acceptance of a climate policy

Another crucial factor for promoting public acceptance of the green transition is the perceived fairness of the policy. There is evidence that perceived fairness is often a stronger predictor of climate change policy support than perceived policy effectiveness. This concept, particularly distributive fairness, involves whether a climate policy is seen as demanding an unfair sacrifice from certain segments of the population while primarily benefiting the wealthiest in the short term. This consideration has consistently been identified in our roundtable discussion as a main reason for the unpopularity of certain policies, such as wind farms, where the local population is seen to bear the inconvenience while the financial and energy benefits are perceived to accrue to an elite. Similarly, meat tax policies have been unpopular as they are seen as disproportionately impacting the most disadvantaged demographics.

Engagement Implication:          

It could be helpful for the government to develop a communication strategy that effectively communicates the fair, balanced distribution of costs and advantages of proposed climate measures across the UK public, and also to shift politically weaponised narratives that portray climate policies as punishing lower-income or vulnerable groups, by highlighting that the negative impacts of climate change will disproportionately and most severely affect these very communities.

This contribution presents novel data and findings from research I have led. Few additional references were also included just to set these original findings in their wider context and show how they fit within the key theoretical work in the field.

Additional References:

1.              Sparkman, G., Geiger, N. & Weber, E. U. Americans experience a false social reality by underestimating popular climate policy support by nearly half. Nat Commun 13, 4779 (2022).

2.              Gurney, R. M., Dunlap, R. E. & Caniglia, B. S. Climate Change SOS: Addressing Climate Impacts within a Climate Change Spiral of Silence. Soc Nat Resour 35, 1276–1296 (2022).

3.              Geiger, N. & Swim, J. K. Climate of silence: Pluralistic ignorance as a barrier to climate change discussion. J Environ Psychol 47, 79–90 (2016).

4.              Rickards, L., Wiseman, J. & Kashima, Y. Barriers to effective climate change mitigation: the case of senior government and business decision makers. WIREs Climate Change 5, 753–773 (2014).

5.              Leviston, Z., Stanley, S. K. & Walker, I. Perceived support for climate policy in Australia: The asymmetrical influence of voting behaviour. J Environ Psychol 100, 102488 (2024).

6.              Dorison, C. A., Minson, J. A. & Rogers, T. Selective exposure partly relies on faulty affective forecasts. Cognition 188, 98–107 (2019).

April 2025