
Replication data and code for publication "Climate Change Policy Preferences and Foreign State Behavior - Survey Experimental Evidence on Reciprocal Defection" in Climatic Change. Abstract: The Paris Agreement emphasizes transparency over individual country targets and achievements as a coordination instrument for `ratcheting up' global climate policy. Does free-riding of third countries affect public support for domestic climate policy? Citizens could reciprocate defection, but only if free-riding concerns are a binding constraint on public support. Prior literature indicates that reciprocity considerations matter for agreement-making or specific climate policy support. Building on this literature and drawing on high-quality population-representative survey experiments in Switzerland (N=3,464), I instead focus on how citizens react to the defection of important emitters from target achievement. I show that citizens reciprocate strongly, reducing support for ratcheting up, but also for basic compliance with current Swiss targets. Respondents with anti-climate-policy attitudes and high perceived ego- or sociotropic economic burden from the Green Transition show a particularly strong reduction in support, while I find no indication that defection induces a counterbalancing logic among most-likely subgroups. These results indicate that distributional and free-riding concerns interact, and that forming pro-climate coalitions might become more difficult when foreign countries fail to implement their Paris targets.
reciprocity, collective action theory, citizen preferences, Political Behavior, International Relations, public opinion, Paris agreement, Environmental Politics, free-riding, climate policy, survey experiment
reciprocity, collective action theory, citizen preferences, Political Behavior, International Relations, public opinion, Paris agreement, Environmental Politics, free-riding, climate policy, survey experiment
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