Right, left or green: what matters the most for supporting environmental policies? Exploring the role of political orientation, perception of a policy’s political orientation, and ecological identity

In this research, we examine the effect of the congruence between individuals’ political orientation and their perception of the political orientation of pro-environmental policies on their support of those policies (i.e., party-over-policy effect), and whether individuals’ ecological identity moderates this effect. Based on two quantitative studies, we found that people with stronger ecological identity support pro-environmental policies even if they perceive them as having a political orientation opposed to their own. Even though left-leaning people generally supported pro-environmental policies more than right-leaning people, the less participants had a strong ecological identity, the more they preferred to support a policy they perceived as aligned with their own political orientation. These results provide support that ecological identity moderates the effect of the congruence between individuals’ political orientation and pro-environmental policies’ perceived political orientation on the support of those policies.