Willingness to incur private costs for climate adaptation? Public support for undergrounding electricity transmission lines in California

Abstract

Climate mitigation policies face a political challenge because they tend to impose local costs to create a global public goods benefit. While climate adaptation tends to create local benefits while imposing local costs, the benefits tend to accrue in the long run while costs are incurred in the short run. Might this time inconsistency challenge get abated when individuals learn of different rationales for adaptation policies or have experienced natural disasters? To reduce electricity outages from extreme weather events such as wildfires and storms, burying transmission lines has gained policy traction. But to pay for it, households will probably face higher energy bills. In a survey experiment in California (N = 1484), we randomly exposed respondents to three treatment frames that highlight different co-benefits of undergrounding lines: decarbonization (electrification is crucial for climate transition), equity (electricity outages burden low-income households), and national pride (the US lags behind Western Europe in undergrounding lines). To our surprise, the decarbonization frame reduced support levels, while other frames were not significant. We find that the frequency of experiencing electricity outages in the last 12 months, and property damage from extreme weather events (within 200 miles) increases support for undergrounding lines.