Contingencies of Climate Geoengineering and Moral Hazard

Abstract Geoengineering (GE) represents technologies designed to address the impacts of climate change. Two major research priorities have emerged. The first is the public’s understanding of and preferences for specific GE approaches and their perceived risks. The second is the moral hazard potential, or the preference for technological fixes that may disincentivize mitigation efforts focused on eliminating reliance on fossil fuels. We extend current research to explore the US public’s preferences for different GE approaches, and whether they predict moral hazard beliefs. We use data from the 2020 National Survey on Energy and the Environment, a nationally representative survey, and employ multinominal logistic regressions to examine the factors that predict prioritization of GE over mitigation. Our findings begin to solve the moral hazard riddle, suggesting a contingency model. We find that trust in scientists, conservative political beliefs, being non-White, and support for stratospheric aerosol injections and ambient air capture positively predicted selecting GE over standard mitigation efforts. The findings suggest that within the US context, moral hazard concerns should be directed towards a specific contingency. Moral hazard may also only be a concern for those who have lower climate risk perceptions but are forced to make climate policy choices. Further research is needed to explain the potential drivers of moral hazard beliefs, both in the US as well as beyond North American and OECD countries.