Public expectations about the impact of COVID-19 on climate action by citizens and government.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 crisis many have opinionated on how it may affect society's response to climate change. Two key questions here are how COVID-19 is expected to influence climate action by citizens and by the government. We answer these by applying topic modelling to textual responses from a survey of Spanish citizens. The identified topics tend to be more negative than positive, and more optimistic concerning future climate action by citizens. Positive views involve increasing pro-environmental behavior and are more common among younger, higher educated and male respondents as well as among those who perceive climate change as a serious threat or positively assessed COVID-19 confinement. Negative topics express concern that financial resources for climate action will be limited due to a focus on healthcare and economic recovery. In addition, they mention government mismanagement and waste due to use of protective measures like masks and gloves as impediments to effective climate action.

Climate concern and policy acceptance before and after COVID-19.

It remains unclear how COVID-19 has affected public engagement with the climate crisis. According to the finite-pool-of-worry hypothesis, concern about climate change should have decreased after the pandemic, in turn reducing climate-policy acceptance. Here we test these and several other conjectures by using survey data from 1172 Spanish participants who responded before and after the first wave of COVID-19, allowing for both aggregate and within-person analyses. We find that on average climate concern has decreased, while acceptance of most climate policies has increased. At the individual-level, adverse health experiences are unrelated to these changes. The same holds for negative economic experiences, with the exception that unemployment is associated with reduced acceptance of some policies. Complementary to the finite-pool-of-worry test, we examine three additional pandemic-related issues. As we find, (1) higher climate concern and policy acceptance are associated with a belief that climate change contributed to the COVID-19 outbreak; (2) higher policy acceptance is associated with a positive opinion about how the government addressed the COVID-19 crisis; (3) citizens show favorable attitudes to a carbon tax with revenues used to compensate COVID-19-related expenditures. Overall, we conclude there is support for addressing the global climate crisis even during a global health crisis.

Carbon tax acceptability with information provision and mixed revenue uses.

Public acceptability of carbon taxation depends on its revenue use. Which single or mixed revenue use is most appropriate, and which perceptions of policy effectiveness and fairness explain this, remains unclear. It is, moreover, uncertain how people's prior knowledge about carbon taxation affects policy acceptability. Here we conduct a survey experiment to test how distinct revenue uses, prior knowledge, and information provision about the functioning of carbon taxation affect policy perceptions and acceptability. We show that spending revenues on climate projects maximises acceptability as well as perceived fairness and effectiveness. A mix of different revenue uses is also popular, notably compensating low-income households and funding climate projects. In addition, we find that providing information about carbon taxation increases acceptability for unspecified revenue use and for people with more prior tax knowledge. Furthermore, policy acceptability is more strongly related to perceived fairness than to perceived effectiveness.

Tackling the plastic problem: A review on perceptions, behaviors, and interventions.

The excessive production and consumption of plastic has serious consequences on the environment and human health. The reduction of plastic has therefore become a major global challenge. As technical solutions might be insufficient to curb the problem, a perspective highlighting the impact of human behavior is needed. The current literature review provides an overview of the existing social-scientific literature on plastic, ranging from risk awareness, consumers' preferences, and predictors of usage behavior to political and psychological intervention strategies. By reviewing the literature, we aim to identify potential factors for future interventions to reduce plastic consumption. The 187 studies reviewed show that people much appreciate and routinely use plastic, despite a pronounced awareness of the associated problems. Habits, norms, and situational factors seem to be especially predictive for plastic consumption behavior. Both political and psychological interventions are potentially effective, although long-term effects are often uncertain. The review closes with implications for behavior-based solutions and future research, which should combine interdisciplinary approaches and take into account cultural differences.