Research
How does exposure to climate change influence firms’ lobbying behavior in a polarized political environment? As climate change continues to accelerate environmental degradation, exacerbate biodiversity loss, and escalate public health risks across the globe, an increase in policy pressure to address climate change across regulatory and legislative venues has broad impacts on the private sector. These changes pose challenges for firms that must respond to the risks and opportunities accompanying policy interventions. Firms endogenously seek to shape policy-making and regulation to minimize costs and maximize opportunities within their industry through lobbying Congress or federal agencies. However, we do not have sufficient theory or empirical evidence explaining how firms behave differently when seeking opportunities compared to avoiding costs. I test established models of firm venue selection for lobbying to investigate how firms seek to shape both policy and regulation. Using data from quarterly earning calls from publicly traded firms that indicate exposure to climate change opportunities, regulation, and physical risk, I investigate how firm exposure and opportunity influence venue selection and lobbying strategy. Moreover, I use data from over 2000 publicly traded firms’ earning calls between 2000 and 2020 to analyze whether political partisanship affects these strategic decisions differently when firms aim to exploit opportunities instead of when mitigating costs. This paper contributes to our understanding of lobbying venue selection on widely salient policy objects that have become increasingly polarized.
How do interest group contributions to Congress shape partisan positions on environmental policy? Furthermore, to what extent do industry contributions influence legislators' support for environmental policy independent of party affiliation? I consider the effect of the natural resource and energy industry on legislative party cohesion on environmental policy in the House and Senate between 1990 and 2022. Using data scoring legislators' support for environmental legislation through roll call votes and agenda-setting tactics year-over-year, I show an independent negative relationship between industry contributions to Congress and environmental policy scores for members. This trend cuts across parties in the House of Representatives and consistently affects Democrats in the Senate, whereas ideology and party explain anti-environmental behavior for Senate Republicans. My model is less reliable in deciphering the average effect of industry contributions within the Senate over time. These findings suggest that asymmetrical industry spending by the party within Congress drives legislative party cohesion within the Republican Party and creates a dynamic where a small number of Democrats receive disproportionate funding from interest groups as veto players. These results illustrate a policy strategy for powerful industries that drive cohesion on environmental policy for Republicans on average while creating environmental defectors for Democrats on the margin.
What shapes public preferences for green industrial policy? Transitioning from fossil fuels incurs significant, unevenly distributed costs. Green industrial policy in the U.S. aims to do more than compensate costs. Instead, policymakers use it to preempt backlash and build durable coalitions around green industries. Effective design must address transition costs, navigate partisan dynamics, overcome local renewable energy barriers, and bolster green industries. Using nationally representative survey data (2008–2024), I examine voter support for climate policies like renewable energy standards, CO2 regulation, and coal plant emissions limits. I additionally conduct a conjoint experiment to test whether bundling climate policies with material benefits, Just Transition measures, or partisan appeals increases the likelihood of policy support. While bundling with social and economic issues proves broadly popular across demographics. I find that no unifying framework increases the likelihood on average of climate policy adoption on average. Instead, education is the strongest predictor of both climate policy adoption and equity-oriented policies like strengthening unions and compensating fossil fuel communities. This finding challenges previous models where climate change policy is unpopular and rather needs to be coupled with other policies in order to garner popularity. Climate policy advocates seeking policy support should question the prevailing assumption that coalition building around climate policy needs to garner credibility through targeting population subsets with credible commitments to address transition costs. Rather than increasing overall support via one popular policy. This study uses public opinion analysis and conjoint survey experiments to evaluate policies’ causal effects on climate proposal support.
