Conference Agenda

Public support is central to the implementation of climate policy, yet evidence on how climate-related information affects policy preferences remains mixed. This paper studies how scientifically grounded climate information, framed as either good or bad news, shapes support for climate policies and examines through which emotional channels these effects operate. We conduct a large-scale survey experiment with approximately 8,000 respondents in Germany, exposing participants to short texts summarizing recent scientific findings on climate sensitivity, policy effectiveness, and progress toward climate targets. When significant, bad news tends to increase support for climate policies, while corresponding good news does not symmetrically reduce it. However, good news about successful policy performance---the effectiveness of carbon pricing to reduce emissions---increases support for the specific policy discussed, with limited spillover to other policy domains. Emotional responses can help explain a substantial share of these effects, with worry and guilt increasing policy support and calm reducing it. By contrast, purely factual information yields smaller and less robust effects. Overall, the findings point to emotional responses as an important channel through which climate information and scientific news affect policy support.