Academic Echo Chambers and the Myth of Behavioral Spillover in Climate Action

The article “The Chicken or the Egg? Spillover between Private Climate Action and Climate Policy Support” is a remarkable example of what can only be described as academic tail-chasing. What begins as an exploration of the interplay between individual climate actions—like reducing meat consumption—and broader policy support quickly morphs into an intellectual exercise that not only makes no new contributions to the field but also leads nowhere meaningful.

Abstract

People engage in many different activities with climate consequences, including mundane everyday activities, such as eating meals and either saving or throwing away leftovers, and collective actions, such as voting, participating in political events and in other ways expressing support for or resistance against climate-relevant policy. Does engaging in everyday climate-relevant activities have implications for support of climate policy, and vice versa, as suggested by research on pro-environmental behavioural spillover? A repeated survey was collected yearly between 2018 and 2022 from representative samples of Norwegians, most of whom participated in more than one survey. The surveys included self-reports about two everyday climate-relevant behaviours (eating red meat and discarding food waste) and the support for two types of policy to mitigate climate change (expansion of wind power and “carbon taxes” – the use of taxes or fees to regulate climate-relevant behaviour). Cross-lagged structural equation modelling of relationships between everyday climate-relevant behaviour and support for mitigation policy reveal that, as expected, all auto-regressive effects (of a latent variable on itself, measured one year apart) are highly significant. There are also significant, positive cross-lagged (i.e., spillover) effects, which are generally bigger between the two types of everyday behaviours and support for the two types of policies than between everyday behaviour and policy support. However, support for carbon taxes has a strong positive effect on reducing meat consumption. Hence, it appears that when it comes to climate actions, consumer and citizen roles are intertwined. Spillover effects are partly mediated through climate concern.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027249442400207X

It’s hard to take this seriously, given the obsessive focus on minor, everyday behaviors like how much meat someone eats or how they discard food waste. The attempt to link these trivial actions to monumental climate policy decisions is not only misguided but also reveals a striking misunderstanding of how real-world policy is shaped.

The Premise: Over-Analyzing the Mundane

The paper opens with a discussion on whether small, everyday activities, such as eating red meat or throwing away food, influence people’s support for climate policies like carbon taxes and wind power expansion. This premise alone raises a red flag. The assumption that these micro-level activities could meaningfully spill over into support for large-scale policy changes is more than far-fetched. It’s akin to suggesting that someone deciding to recycle their soda cans once a week will naturally lead them to demand a complete overhaul of national energy policy. It’s the ultimate case of over-extrapolation, with very little basis in observable reality.

The authors draw on a longitudinal panel study from Norway, collecting data over five years on red meat consumption, food waste, and support for two types of climate policies. According to the study, support for carbon taxes had a “spillover” effect on reducing meat consumption. However, here’s where the logic unravels: does anyone seriously believe that a person’s dietary habits shift simply because they support a tax? This assumption not only infantilizes voters but also underestimates the complexity of human behavior and political beliefs.

To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to investigate possible spillovers not only from pro-environmental everyday behaviours to environmental policy support, but also from environmental policy support to pro-environmental everyday behaviours. We employ a design, where representative samples of the Norwegian population were interviewed once a year, five years in a row, using a structured questionnaire. Hence, our design allows for testing many more touchpoints than previous longitudinal spillover research, substantially advancing insights into the stability of behavioural spillover. The study focuses on two climate-relevant everyday behaviours: eating red meat and discarding food waste, as well as the support for two types of policy, which are considered essential components of climate change mitigation policy in many countries: the expansion of wind power and “carbon taxes” – defined here as the use of economic instruments like taxes or fees to regulate climate-relevant behaviour. Besides (1) investigating spillover between climate-relevant everyday behaviours and climate policy support, we also measure climate concern to investigate (2) how strongly the studied behaviours and policies are associated with climate change among the Norwegian public and (3) whether possible behavioural spillover effects are mediated through changes in climate concern (Höchli et al., 2019; Stangherlin et al., 2023).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027249442400207X

Behavioral Spillover: The Unproven Theory

At the heart of this paper is the notion of “behavioral spillover.” According to this theory, engaging in one pro-environmental action supposedly increases the likelihood of participating in another. The authors seem to believe that a positive correlation between small, individual actions and broader policy support is inevitable. But here’s the rub: correlation does not equal causation. The research acknowledges that these correlations are often weak and context-dependent, yet continues to beat the same drum.

Highlights

• •Climate-friendly responding tends to spill over to more behaviours over time.
• •The spillover process is partly mediated through increased climate concern.
• •Climate-relevant behaviour and support for climate policy become more consistent.
  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027249442400207X

The study finds that everyday behaviors like reducing meat consumption are more strongly correlated with support for specific climate policies, such as carbon taxes, rather than with unrelated environmental behaviors like reducing food waste. But does this really tell us anything meaningful? In reality, a person’s diet and their stance on environmental policies are shaped by a variety of factors—personal beliefs, economic interests, cultural values, and political ideologies. To suggest that these can be boiled down to a simplistic model of spillover, where one behavior naturally leads to another, is an insult to both the complexity of human behavior and the nuances of public policy.

The Real Driver: Ideological Alignment

What the paper only tangentially deals with and dismisses, is the likelihood that a pre-existing political or environmental stance drives both individual behaviors and policy support in tandem. It’s not that someone starts recycling, then suddenly supports a carbon tax—it’s that individuals who believe in the climate change narrative adopt both behaviors and policies simultaneously as part of a cohesive ideological framework.

For instance, those who believe in climate alarmism don’t stop at reducing their meat consumption. They support carbon taxes, advocate for wind power expansion, and make various lifestyle changes all at once. These actions don’t occur sequentially through behavioral spillover; they emerge from a broader belief system. It’s not a gradual process of persuasion but an all-in commitment to an ideological stance.

The study mistakenly treats behaviors like reducing food waste or supporting carbon taxes as isolated events that spill over into each other, when in fact they are all part of the same worldview. People who buy into the climate crisis narrative will, from the outset, support a wide array of environmental policies. Their stance on climate change informs all their actions at once, not step-by-step as the study implies.

Flawed Assumptions and Misplaced Focus

The authors make another fundamental mistake by conflating voluntary individual behavior with collective policy support. It’s true that climate change rhetoric often pushes the idea that personal responsibility—like recycling or cutting down on meat consumption—can make a real difference. However, this article takes that idea to absurd extremes by suggesting that such personal actions can influence large-scale policy shifts.

The paper references research that shows how people might feel morally “off the hook” after performing small pro-environmental actions, a phenomenon known as “moral licensing.” Essentially, people might justify continuing an environmentally harmful behavior because they’ve already done their bit for the planet. For instance, someone might feel that they can justify a transatlantic flight because they recycle. This leads to an obvious contradiction: are we really supposed to believe that both supporting carbon taxes and cutting down on red meat consumption is part of the same behavioral trajectory?

Carbon Tax and Wind Power: Economic Myths, Not Solutions

One of the core policy solutions discussed in the article is the carbon tax, often hailed as a magic bullet to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Support for carbon taxes is portrayed as having a spillover effect that leads to reductions in red meat consumption. But here’s where the argument takes a ridiculous turn. The authors seem to suggest that if we can just get people to support carbon taxes, they’ll start making more climate-conscious decisions in other areas of their lives, such as their diet.

This assumption is grounded in fantasy rather than fact. Carbon taxes have been politically divisive and economically burdensome wherever they’ve been implemented. They disproportionately affect low-income individuals while having a negligible impact on reducing overall emissions. The idea that support for these taxes somehow translates into a broader change in personal behavior is absurd. In fact, it’s far more likely that people will resent being taxed for behaviors they feel are necessary or justified, leading to backlash rather than spillover.

Wind power, another focal point of the study, is equally problematic. Expanding wind power, especially onshore, has been met with significant public resistance in many countries, including Norway. Wind farms are not only an eyesore; they also disrupt local ecosystems, harm wildlife, and create noise pollution. The idea that increasing support for wind power will lead to widespread pro-environmental behavior changes is detached from reality. People might tolerate a wind farm being built near their home because they feel it’s a necessary evil, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to suddenly adopt a vegan diet or stop driving their cars.

The Real Spillover: From Climate Policies to Economic Disaster

The authors’ focus on “spillover” misses the real issue: the spillover from misguided climate policies to economic and social harm. Policies like carbon taxes and massive investments in wind power are not without consequences. They lead to increased energy costs, job losses in traditional energy sectors, and greater economic inequality. Yet none of this is acknowledged in the article. Instead, the authors persist in their academic echo chamber, analyzing trivial behavioral shifts while ignoring the real-world impacts of the policies they champion.

Conclusion: Ideology, Not Behavior, Drives Climate Action

Ultimately, this article epitomizes what happens when academia becomes too wrapped up in its own theories and loses sight of the real world. The authors waste considerable effort on a question that is fundamentally flawed. Behavioral spillover is a red herring. It’s not that people’s small actions influence their broader political stances—it’s that their political stances dictate both their actions and policy support from the beginning.

To those who genuinely believe in the climate crisis narrative, every action—from skipping steaks to championing wind farms—is just another part of the same ideological framework. There’s no “spillover” effect; there’s simply a commitment to a worldview that demands conformity in both personal and policy spheres.

The study would have been better served by exploring the deeper ideological underpinnings of why certain people adopt these positions wholesale. Instead, it wastes its time analyzing trivial behaviors in isolation, giving us nothing more than a convoluted, circular argument that fails to address the larger picture.

In sum, the real driver here is political and ideological alignment, not individual behaviors influencing policy support. The authors, caught in their academic bubble, overlook the obvious: people who buy into the climate crisis narrative will support all the policies and behaviors at once—not as a result of any behavioral spillover, but because they see it all as part of the same belief system.