Schwartz et al., 2024

Schwartz, J. A., Lendway, P., & Nuri, A. (2024). Fossil fuel divestment and public climate change policy preferences: an experimental test in three countries. Environmental Politics, 33(1), 1-24.

Studies 1–3 were fully-crossed 2 × 2 × 2 between‐subjects designs where respondents were presented with a mock news article claiming to be from the Associated Press that discussed a group of 1,000 organizations that were considering divesting from fossil fuel companies. This is a realistic way in which members of the American public might be exposed to information about the divestment movement. For example, a 2020 article in the Wall Street Journal discussed 1,200 institutions that pledged to divest from fossil fuel companies.

We then experimentally manipulated whether the organizations discussed ultimately decide to divest (yes or no), the diversity of organizations discussed (high or low), and the expected financial costs of divestment (high or low). In Study 1 we also included a no information condition that can be used to measure baseline support for climate policies. Study 4 included our theoretically strongest text-based treatment (divestment, high diversity, and high costs), along with a video treatment discussing the fossil fuel divestment movement, a written transcript of the video, and a no information condition. We ask about a variety of climate change mitigation policies, including government spending, regulations, taxes, tax subsidies, and international agreements.

Study 1 was nationally representative (1,600 Americans). As a test of the Diversity Hypothesis, we varied whether the relevant organizations included a narrow set of institutions that are likely predisposed to support divestment from fossil fuel companies––environmental non-profits and universities––or a wider range of institutions, some of which––like faith-based organizations and for-profit businesses––may be viewed as less prone to divest from fossil fuel companies. This treatment is based on accurate elements of the fossil fuel divestment movement, as all of these types of organizations have actually divested. In order to evaluate the Costliness Hypothesis, we varied whether analysts expect divesting will significantly reduce the amount of money organizations make from their investments. They tested vague "universities" rather than specific ones.

Study 2 was conducted with 711 Indian citizens (low power? 8 conditions), representative in age and mostly political party. The percentage of college graduates in Study 2 is significantly higher than the general Indian population; the sample also has higher levels of income compared to the general population of India and over-represents men. In South Africa (n = 575) the sample was generally representative of the broader South African population. Additionally, a nationally representative sample of U.S. citizens (n = 1,030) was employed. The major innovation of Study 4 is to employ a video treatment created by 350.org. More specifically, Study 4 was a four-factor between-subjects experiment where respondents were randomly assigned to a control group or one of three treatment groups. The control group received no information about the divestment movement. The first treatment group received the video from 350.org. The content of the video bears strong similarities to our vignette from Study 1 in that it (a) discusses the number of institutions that have divested from fossil fuel companies, (b) notes the dollar amount of assets these institutions control, and (c) highlights the diversity of the divestment movement by discussing the significant number of faith-based institutions that have divested. The second treatment condition consisted of a written transcript of the video, which enables us to directly test whether video treatments do indeed have a greater impact on public beliefs and policy preferences than text-based treatments for this issue. Finally, we included the theoretically strongest text-based treatment from Study 1: divestment, high diversity, and high cost.

Across all four of our studies, we find no statistically significant support for the contention that fossil fuel divestment can impact the public’s climate policy preferences; we do not find consistent support in Figure 2 for any of our mechanism hypotheses. Some potentially problematic possibilities are that respondents either (a) did not believe our divestment treatment, or (b) already knew about the relatively large-scale fossil fuel divestment movement and thus our treatment did not provide any new information. Respondents assigned to the divestment treatment generally did believe fossil fuel divestment was becoming more common. This suggests that our null result is not due to a weak treatment, but because respondents’ climate change preferences are sticky.