E. Keith Smith

Stringent environmental policies often face limited public support. In response, governments often begin with ‘softer’ voluntary industry measures. Yet, it remains unclear how public awareness of those measures, and information about how effective they are expected to be, shapes support for stronger follow-on policies. We test this using a survey-embedded experiment in Switzerland ( n = 6586) anchored on the Swiss Food Waste Action Plan. Baseline support for stronger policies is already high. Awareness of the voluntary plan produces a small increase in support, with no evidence of crowding-out. Information about expected effectiveness changes how respondents view the voluntary plan itself but does not translate into increased support for stronger policy. Accordingly, voluntary measures do not meaningfully shift preferences in either direction. In cases where the baseline support for stronger policy is already substantial, waiting for voluntary measures to increase demand carries real opportunity costs.

The Paris Agreement shifted the central challenge of climate mitigation from international burden-sharing to domestic politics. In high-emitting countries, the binding constraint on near-term emissions cuts is no longer the absence of effective policy instruments, but their political feasibility, that is, governments' capacity and willingness to adopt, implement, and sustain mitigation policy over time. We review the political feasibility of climate mitigation along four dimensions: stakeholder interests and influence, public opinion and social norms, political-economic context and institutional constraints, and distributional effects and inequality. Using the policymaking process as our analytical lens, we trace how these dimensions hinder or enable mitigation at successive stages of agenda-setting, formulation, and implementation. We synthesise this literature into a practical framework for making mitigation politically feasible, identify a set of persistent misconceptions that obstruct progress, and outline near-term actions that the evidence supports. The central challenge of mitigation is no longer identifying effective instruments, but making them politically feasible under real-world conditions.

Understanding the drivers of public support for climate policies is crucial for designing socially feasible policy packages. However, most large-scale public opinion surveys focus primarily on mitigation policies. Here, we combine two representative survey waves from nine European countries (n = 27,910) to directly compare determinants of public support for climate change mitigation versus adaptation measures. We find that respondents support both mitigation and adaptation as policy objectives, but support specific adaptation policies slightly more than specific mitigation measures. Moreover, support for the two is shaped by a different composition of individual characteristics and policy evaluations. While adaptation support is driven primarily by perceived effectiveness, mitigation support is mostly driven by cost salience and politicisation. Our results suggest a stark difference in how Europeans incorporate the costs and benefits of mitigation versus adaptation policies into their support, and suggest avenues for remedying this imbalance.

Air pollution is a major global health hazard, with the worst burden falling on cities in the Majority World. Yet which conditions shape governments' willingness to act on air pollution remains poorly understood. Drawing on 63 semi-structured interviews with 72 air pollution experts and stakeholders in six highly polluted cities (Accra, Kampala, Johannesburg, Jakarta, Dhaka, Delhi), we examine how economic development, democracy, and data availability structure the influence of citizens, local advocates, economic elites, and country-external agencies on governments' mitigation efforts. We find that governments remain primarily responsive to economic elites across levels of economic development, while external actors play a stronger role in the lowest-income case, Dhaka. Democracy strengthens citizens and local advocates through electoral accountability and civil society mobilization. Data availability creates opportunities for influence but also provokes governmental counter-strategies. These findings highlight the centrality of stakeholder power in clean-air governance, showing how political, economic, and informational constraints shape whose demands governments respond to.

Air pollution is a leading health risk, especially in large cities of the Majority World. In these emerging markets and developing economies, it remains unclear whether residents will demand mitigation, perceive it as a threat or view poor air quality as a necessary part of development. Competing theories predict either strong or weak support and cross-national evidence is scarce, particularly for measures of policy support. Here we surveyed 11,417 adults in 4 severely polluted cities—Accra, Delhi, Jakarta and Johannesburg. Air quality was a highly prioritized issue and overall levels of concern are very high. Majorities support six mitigation proposals, including cost-salient measures such as stricter industrial limits, increasing household electrification and expanding public transport. Concern, trust and low perceived behavioral control were the strongest correlates of support. People see air pollution, feel its effects and want governments to act, even when action entails economic costs, challenging views of limited environmental demand in highly exposed, economically developing settings.

Air pollution is a global health crisis, but evidence on public perceptions of pollution exposure and mitigation demands remains fragmented. We first map "what research covers" by reviewing the survey-based literature on public views of air pollution, coding 456 studies through a transparent, LLM-assisted screening and classification workflow. Then, we map "what surveys offer" by cataloging 112 air-quality survey items in cross-national survey programs, coding them manually using the same classification framework. We find persistent geographic and exposure-level biases: survey-based research focuses on high-income countries, China and India, while cross-national item coverage is more clustered in Europe. Thematically, both domains emphasize perceptions, with gaps in behavior, policy preferences, and health—particularly in high-exposure regions. These findings highlight that where mitigation is most needed, research coverage is most limited and accessible survey data most scarce. Methodologically, the paper develops a validated LLM-assisted workflow to facilitate future large-scale literature mapping and classification.

Although economic growth remains a central objective in policymaking and political discourse, its compatibility with environmental sustainability is increasingly contested. Yet it remains unclear whether this debate is reflected in public opinion. We therefore undertake a cross-national survey of 16,781 people across 13 EU countries to assess citizens’ attitudes in this regard. We find that nearly 60% of citizens express pro-growth views, seeing economic growth as essential for a sustainable society. Of these, more than half hold a moderate and less than half a strong pro-growth view. Additionally, a third of respondents show indifference about growth, while less than 10% hold views that are sceptical about growth. Wealthier countries with less income inequality show lower support for economic growth. Pro-growth attitudes correlate positively with both self-enhancement and self-transcendence values, suggesting that citizens may view growth not only as a means for personal advancement but also as a pathway to collective wellbeing. Growth attitudes have no significant association with climate concern or climate policy support, suggesting a more nuanced picture than a traditional trade-off narrative.

The feasibility of implementing climate policies relies on citizen support. While recent efforts have focused on shifting the attitudes of policy opponents, little is known about the middle group who neither reflexively endorse nor reject mitigation measures. Here, using a survey of climate policy preferences across 13 EU countries (n = 19,328) in 2024, we identify the ‘conditionals’—a crucial faction of moderates whose support shifts across 15 climate measures— and examine the factors influencing their choices and quantify their electoral impact. Conditionals constitute 33% of Europeans who are active voters for the dominant centrist and centre-right parties. The preferences of conditionals hinge upon specific policy instruments and the perceived cost–benefit balances but less on fixed ideology or demographics. The potential shift of conditionals plays a vital role in shaping overall patterns of public policy support and electoral outcomes. Our findings emphasize the visible benefits of strategic engagement with conditionals for climate policy success.

The feasibility of implementing climate policies relies on citizen support. While recent efforts have focused on shifting the attitudes of policy opponents, little is known about the middle group who neither reflexively endorse nor reject mitigation measures. Using a survey of climate policy preferences across 13 EU countries (n=19,328) in 2024, we identify the ‘Conditionals’- a crucial faction of moderates whose support shifts across 15 climate measures, examine the factors influencing their choices and quantify their electoral impact. Conditionals constitute 33% of Europeans who are active voters for the dominant centrist and centre-right parties. Conditionals’ preferences hinge upon specific policy instruments and the perceived cost–benefit balances, but less on fixed ideology or demographics. The potential shift of Conditionals plays a vital role in shaping overall patterns of public policy support and electoral outcomes. Our findings emphasize the visible benefits of strategic engagement with conditionals for climate policy success.