The Importance of EU Coordination: Citizen Preferences for Climate Leadership and the Role of Conditional Cooperation

Abstract We use a choice experiment to investigate the support for climate leadership among representative panels of citizens in seven European countries. We find that people tend to be conditional cooperators and are more positive about their country being a climate leader if assured that other countries will follow suit. At realistic cost levels, a majority oppose their country taking the lead, and most do not expect that taking the lead will result in other countries following suit. The lack of support is explained by expectations that such leadership will result in other countries free riding. One important implication of our study is that coordination at the European Union level, as demonstrated by the Fit for 55 package, is essential.