ATTCLIMATE · ATTCLIMPOLS

Attitudes, Climate Change and Support for Mitigation Policies

Tracking how citizens and political elites in Spain respond to climate change — and what it takes to turn public concern into durable policy support.

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What is this project about?

ATTClimate (Political Attitudes, Climate Change, and Support for Mitigation Policies) investigates how Spanish citizens form their opinions about climate change and the public policies designed to address it. At its core, the project asks: who supports climate policies, why, and under what conditions?

Climate change is one of the defining challenges of our time, yet the implementation of effective mitigation policies depends critically on public support. Policies such as carbon taxes, low-emission zones, renewable energy subsidies, or restrictions on fossil fuels all entail real costs and trade-offs that citizens must accept for democracies to enact them. This research programme seeks to understand the political, social, and psychological factors that shape whether individuals back or oppose these measures.

The programme comprises two consecutive projects. ATTCLIMATE (2022–2025) was based at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), co-directed by Marc Guinjoan and Toni Rodon. ATTCLIMPOLS (2026–2029) is based at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), led by Marc Guinjoan as principal investigator.

2022 – 2025

ATTCLIMATE

The original project (TED2021-132344A-I00), co-directed by Marc Guinjoan (UAB) and Toni Rodon (UPF). It fielded four nationally representative panel survey waves (2023–2025) on climate attitudes and policy support, producing one of the first panel-format climate surveys in the world.

2026 – 2029 · New

ATTCLIMPOLS

From Attitudes to Action in Climate Politics (PID2025-173985OB-I00) builds directly on ATTCLIMATE. It extends the Spanish panel with three further waves (2027–2029), constructs a harmonised cross-country database of climate attitudes covering 100+ countries, and deepens the study of political elites’ responses to climate change.

Research Lines

Longitudinal survey data. A seven-wave Spanish panel (2023–2029) tracking how attitudes evolve over time, including how exposure to extreme weather events — such as the October 2024 DANA floods — shapes climate beliefs and policy support.

Quality data for climate research. A harmonised, cross-country database of climate attitudes covering 100+ countries, providing a robust empirical foundation for climate change research worldwide.

Support for public policy. A deeper look at what drives support for climate mitigation policies — from cost and redistribution framing to how political parties and representatives respond to climate change.

Data

ATTClimate has fielded four waves of original survey data (2023–2025) among the Spanish population, accumulating over 15,000 respondent-wave observations, with three further waves planned under ATTCLIMPOLS (2027–2029). The panel design allows us to track attitude change over time and link individual survey responses to real-world climate events. All harmonised data are available through the CORA research data repository — see the CORA Data page for details. You can also explore the survey data interactively via the Shiny App.

Panel structure

ATTClimate is not four independent cross-sections: each wave attempts to re-interview the same panelists as the previous ones. Retention between consecutive waves is partial — typical of long-running online panels — but large enough to support both simple wave-to-wave trackers and individual-level fixed-effects models that isolate within-person attitude change.

Numbers on the upper arcs show how many panelists answered both waves on either side of the arc; the lower arc shows the same for the two endpoint waves, Wave 1 and Wave 4. In total, 737 respondents completed all four waves, forming the balanced core of the panel used in tracker and fixed-effects analyses.