AMERICAN POLITICS & PUBLIC POLICY WORKSHOP
Abstract: Climate change is transforming the U.S. economy in a number of gradual but increasingly impactful ways. Existing research on climate shocks and economic transformation is not well positioned to explain how these gradual climate shocks will change public opinion and behavior-indeed, they generate contradicting expectations. I study these shocks through the example of the U.S. home insurance market. Using panel data (2016-2024), I show that voters perceive the insurance shock and the events (hurricanes, wildfires) that change them, and react in an economic way. However, insurance rate increases do not change opinion on climate change. I use original survey data (N=4,000) to untangle the causal chain and show why not: voters fail to attribute insurance shocks to climate change and to connect insurance to climate policy. I then use social media data from 3,000 public officials and 2.9 million news articles to explain why individuals aren’t receiving attribution information. This paper advances our understanding of how gradual climate shocks are–and are not–changing the U.S. political system.
Eric Scheuch is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science. His research focuses on climate change, public opinion, judicial politics, and the urban-rural political divide. His work has been published or is in press in Urban Affairs Review, American Politics Research, Energy Research and Social Science, Journal of Environmental Psychology, Climatic Change, Nature Social Science Communications, Current Opinion in the Behavioral Sciences, Global Environmental Psychology, and PLOS Climate. Starting June 2026, he will be the deputy director of experimental research at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.
This workshop is open to current members of the Yale community. More information is available at this link.