Who proposes a bill matters more to Republican men than what it says—at least when it comes to the environment, a recent study found.
In an experiment with 800 adults, researchers used an article describing a hypothetical U.S. Senate bill about funding state programs to reduce water pollution to test partisan preferences, changing only the political affiliation of the proposal’s sponsors.
“While we know that Republicans have a lower level of support for environmental legislation than Democrats, when we take the exact same piece of legislation, if it’s Democrats sponsoring it, Republican support drops tremendously,” said lead author Azdren Coma, a Washington State University sociology doctoral candidate.
Democrats in the study who favored the proposal supported the legislation no matter who proposed it and at higher levels than the Republican participants. Republicans’ support varied, however, dropping about 18% when it was described as being proposed by Senate Democrats as opposed to a group of Republican or bi-partisan senators.
When the researchers looked more closely at that change, they found the drop was primarily driven by gender: with support from Republican men decreasing an average of 24%. The findings were reported in The Sociological Quarterly.
Read the full story:
Phys.org
WSU Insider