TY - JOUR
T1 - Understanding Environmental Public Opinion by Dimension
T2 - How Heuristic Processing Mitigates High Information Costs on Complex Issues
AU - Rugeley, Cynthia R.
AU - Gerlach, John David
PY - 2012/6/1
Y1 - 2012/6/1
N2 - Public opinion matters in environmental policy making. This study examines how individuals form opinions on three distinct environmental topics-climate change, the importance of environmental protection relative to job creation, and wilderness protection. Previous research focusing on environmental concern has yielded conflicting or inconclusive results. We argue that how citizens form attitudes within the environmental domain varies across environmental dimensions and that high information costs cause citizens to engage in heuristic processing to form their opinions. We empirically test our hypothesis by analyzing original data collected from the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey. We find that with more complex issues, citizens rely on familiar shortcuts such as party identification, ideology, and the media. With less complex issues, demographic factors are predictors of attitudes, lending support to arguments that citizens use familiar shortcuts when processing political and policy information.
AB - Public opinion matters in environmental policy making. This study examines how individuals form opinions on three distinct environmental topics-climate change, the importance of environmental protection relative to job creation, and wilderness protection. Previous research focusing on environmental concern has yielded conflicting or inconclusive results. We argue that how citizens form attitudes within the environmental domain varies across environmental dimensions and that high information costs cause citizens to engage in heuristic processing to form their opinions. We empirically test our hypothesis by analyzing original data collected from the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey. We find that with more complex issues, citizens rely on familiar shortcuts such as party identification, ideology, and the media. With less complex issues, demographic factors are predictors of attitudes, lending support to arguments that citizens use familiar shortcuts when processing political and policy information.
KW - Climate Change
KW - Environmental Policy
KW - Environmental Protection
KW - Environmental Public Opinion
KW - Heuristics
KW - Information Costs
KW - Policy Making
KW - Political Affiliation
KW - Wilderness Protection
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84862906028&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84862906028&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/j.1747-1346.2012.00352.x
DO - 10.1111/j.1747-1346.2012.00352.x
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84862906028
VL - 40
SP - 444
EP - 470
JO - Southeastern Political Review
JF - Southeastern Political Review
SN - 1555-5623
IS - 3
ER -