The effect of religiosity on climate change policies

• Main Authors: Lim, Sue Qin, Ng, Jia Hui, Tew, Ying Sian
• Other Authors: James Ang
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Economic development
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/77092
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This paper investigates how religiosity affects the formulation of climate change policies. Much research has been done on the relationship between religiosity and environmental preferences, but few have looked at how this cultural factor influences environmental policies, specifically climate change policies. Using data from the World Values Survey (WVS) from 1981-2014, we examine how religiosity is related to the Climate Laws, Institutions and Measures Index (CLIMI) from 2005-2011. We find that religious countries tend to have less extensive and stringent climate change policies, where a 0.1 increase in religiosity is associated with a 5.30 points decrease in CLIMI score. Our results are robust to a number of considerations. In addition, we also investigate how this relationship varies according to some important socioeconomic circumstances. The results indicate the negative effect of religiosity is more pronounced in countries that are more democratic, more developed and that have lower regulatory quality.