Climate Change Denial among Radical Right-Wing Supporters

• Main Authors: Kirsti M. Jylhä, Pontus Strimling, Jens Rydgren
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-12-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: climate change; climate change denial; radical right; institutional distrust; ideology; political party support
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/23/10226

The linkage between political right-wing orientation and climate change denial is extensively studied. However, previous research has almost exclusively focused on the mainstream right, which differs from the far right (radical and extreme) in some important domains. Thus, we investigated correlates of climate change denial among supporters of a radical right-wing party (Sweden Democrats, <i>N </i>= 2216), a mainstream right-wing party (the Conservative Party, <i>Moderaterna, N </i>= 634), and a mainstream center-left party (Social Democrats, <i>N </i>= 548) in Sweden. Across the analyses, distrust of public service media (Swedish Television, <i>SVT</i>), socioeconomic right-wing attitudes, and antifeminist attitudes outperformed the effects of anti-immigration attitudes and political distrust in explaining climate change denial, perhaps because of a lesser distinguishing capability of the latter mentioned variables. For example, virtually all Sweden Democrat supporters oppose immigration. Furthermore, the effects of party support, conservative ideologies, and belief in conspiracies were relatively weak, and vanished or substantially weakened in the full models. Our results suggest that socioeconomic attitudes (characteristic for the mainstream right) and exclusionary sociocultural attitudes and institutional distrust (characteristic for the contemporary European radical right) are important predictors of climate change denial, and more important than party support per se.