Policymakers must understand public opinion to craft effective policies, particularly in highly polarized areas such as environmental policy. However, the literature investigating the factors that drive public opinion on environmental spending largely ignores the role of exogenous events. This article investigates the role that natural disasters, as a form of exogenous shock, play in shaping public opinion. We construct a dataset using the General Social Survey (GSS) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) natural disaster data from 1980 to 2018 and use generalized ordered logistic models to analyze the relationship between disasters and environmental opinions in the US. Our findings reveal that the number of disasters that occur significantly drives public support for environmental spending and that different types of disaster have heterogeneous impacts with wildfires and severe winter weather events being the most impactful. These results shed light on the impact of environmental events on public opinion on the environment, helping both researchers and policymakers make sense of dynamic public opinions.

政策制定者必须了解公众舆论以制定有效的政策，特别是在环境政策等高度两极分化的领域。然而，研究推动公众对环境支出舆论的因素的文献在很大程度上忽略了外生事件的作用。本文研究了自然灾害作为一种外生冲击形式在塑造公众舆论中所起的作用。我们使用综合社会调查 (GSS) 和美国国家海洋和大气管理局 (NOAA) 的 1980 年至 2018 年自然灾害数据构建了一个数据集，并使用广义有序逻辑模型来分析美国灾害与环境意见之间的关系。我们的研究结果表明，发生的灾害数量显着推动了公众对环境支出的支持，并且不同类型的灾害具有不同的影响，其中野火和严重的冬季天气事件影响最大。这些结果揭示了环境事件对公众舆论对环境的影响，帮助研究人员和政策制定者理解动态的公众舆论。