Personal Damage from Tropical Disasters Increases Republicans’ Support for Climate Change Policies

Authors

• Alessandro Del Ponte, Chapman UniversityFollow
• Enrijeta Shino, The University of Alabama
• Joshua C. Gellers, University of North Florida
• Heather Barnes Truelove, University of North Florida

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-21-2025

Abstract

Climate change is a global threat requiring collective action. Yet, in the United States, many Republicans dismiss the issue. Does experiencing increased frequency of tropical disasters or suffering increased personal damage from tropical disasters affect Republicans’ concern about climate change and their attitudes toward climate policy? Using administrative voter file data and an original representative survey of Florida registered voters, we find that experiencing disasters and especially suffering greater damage is associated with greater concerns about climate change and support for climate mitigation policies. Republicans who personally experienced damage from tropical disasters are more concerned about climate change and show greater support for climate mitigation policies compared to co-partisans who did not suffer any damage. These results hold also when we substitute conservatives for Republicans in the analyses. Overall, our findings qualify the conventional wisdom that Republicans are unconcerned with climate change and demonstrate how they can support climate action.

Comments

NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Journal of Environmental Psychology. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Journal of Environmental Psychology, volume 102, in 2025. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2025.102552

The Creative Commons license below applies only to this version of the article.

Recommended Citation

Del Ponte, A., Shino, E., Gellers, J.C., & Truelove, H.B. (2025). Personal Damage from Tropical Disasters Increases Republicans' Support for Climate Change Policies. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 102, 102552. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2025.102552

Peer Reviewed

1

Copyright

Elsevier

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.