Economic growth versus the environment: government spending, trust, and citizen support for environmental protection

Abstract

Support for sustainability activities among citizens will also increase the probability of more sustainable choices being made by governments. In this study, we investigate the relationship between prioritization of environmental protection over economic growth and government spending on environmental protection in 27 OECD countries and more than 65 000 respondents. Drawing on the perspectives of the thermostatic model, complex belief systems and cognitive dissonance theory, we hypothesize that government spending and attitudes towards environmental protection are related. We further argue that this relationship will be moderated by trust in government. To investigate our hypotheses, we employ OECD statistics on government spending in combination with survey data from WVS and EVS from the years 1995 to 2019. Our findings show that increasing government spending on environmental protection is related to attitudes in favor of economic growth at the expense of environmental concerns, a relationship which is significantly strengthened by having low trust in government.