Finding routes to inspire political conservatives’ support for climate change mitigation is crucial in the United States. In an experiment with U.S. participants, we found that conservatives and moderates are more supportive of climate change mitigation when exposed to information about mitigation actions taken by the private sector. These results suggest that the private sector initiatives may be a way to bolster support for climate action across the U.S. political spectrum. We also tested for downstream spillover effects and found mixed results: Compared to reading about government regulations to mitigate climate change, reading about private sector climate actions led to both increased and decreased support for government-led further mitigation through two different pathways. We found an indirect positive spillover effect in which conservatives and moderates perceived private approaches to be feasible and effective, leading to more mitigation support. However, we also found an indirect negative spillover effect in which reading about private section mitigation actions reduced concern about climate change among conservatives and moderates, thus decreasing their support for government policies to mitigate climate change. These indirect positive and negative spillover effects appear to cancel each other out. Additionally, when comparing the effect of reading about private sector action to reading specifically about a carbon tax (rather than other government regulations) there were no spillover effects. We explore the policy and behavioral implications of these findings.

在美国，寻找途径激发政治保守派对减缓气候变化的支持至关重要。在与美国参与者进行的一项实验中，我们发现，保守派人士和温和派人士在接触有关私营部门采取的缓解行动的信息时，会更支持缓解气候变化。这些结果表明，私营部门的举措可能是在全美国范围内加强对气候行动的支持的一种方式。我们还测试了对下游溢出的影响，并得出了不同的结果：与阅读有关缓解气候变化的政府法规相比，阅读有关私营部门的气候行动导致通过两种不同途径增加和减少了对政府主导的进一步缓解的支持。我们发现了间接的积极溢出效应，保守派和温和派认为私人方法是可行和有效的，从而带来了更多的缓解支持。但是，我们还发现了间接的负面溢出效应，在这种情况下，对私有部门缓解行动的了解减少了保守派和温和派对气候变化的担忧，从而减少了他们对缓解气候变化的政府政策的支持。这些间接的正面和负面溢出效应似乎相互抵消。此外，将阅读有关私营部门行动的效果与专门阅读有关碳税（而不是其他政府法规）的效果进行比较时，没有溢出效应。我们探索这些发现的政策和行为含义。