Voters Support and Are Willing to Pay for Local Climate Adaptation Policies

Abstract

Cities across the United States are increasingly turning to local climate policy as national climate action stalls. Yet, public opinion research on local climate policies remains sparse. I conducted two national surveys ( N = 4,000) measuring respondent willingness to pay (WTP) and policy prioritization for local climate policies. Drawing on a key distinction between adaptation and mitigation policies, I find that respondents are substantially more willing to pay for adaptation policies, contributing to mean WTP estimates of $250–$330 annually. These results replicate across time and survey vendors. A survey experiment further shows that high respondent WTP for adaptation policies is not an artifact of how policies are framed or which level of government administers them. Partisanship, age, and income are the strongest predictors of WTP, though partisan polarization varies considerably across policies. These findings point to local adaptation policy as a promising avenue for climate progress, even amid federal policy retrenchment.