{"id":12081,"date":"2025-08-11T17:22:35","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T17:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/?p=12081"},"modified":"2025-08-11T17:22:36","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T17:22:36","slug":"environmental-spending-our-money-or-our-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/2025\/08\/11\/environmental-spending-our-money-or-our-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Environmental Spending: Our Money or Our Earth?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n Marthe L. Holum & Tor G. Jakobsen, <\/span>“Economic growth versus the environment: government spending, trust, and citizen support for environmental protection,” Environmental Sociology<\/em>,<\/a><\/span> 2024<\/span><\/div>\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A line of wind turbines alongside a long bike path. “Eemmeerdijk<\/a>” by\u00a0Floris M. Oosterveld<\/a>\u00a0is licensed under\u00a0CC BY 2.0<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which do you value more: the environment or the economy? And do you know how much money your government spends on environmental protection? In a recent paper, two Norwegian scholars tried to find out how a country\u2019s level of environmental spending relates to its residents’ views on whether the environment or the economy is more important. They argue that when countries spend more money protecting the environment, it creates a feedback loop that reduces people\u2019s willingness to prioritize the environment over the economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marthe Holum<\/a> and Tor Jakobsen<\/a> looked at data on environmental spending and public opinion across 27 countries from 1995 to 2019. Among those, the country-year with the highest environmental spending was the Netherlands in 2012, which spent 1.59% of their gross domestic product (GDP)<\/a> on environmental protection in that year. The lowest was Lithuania in 1997, when that country spent 0.13% of their GDP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>The researchers then combined this spending data with surveys that asked people whether they thought growing the economy or protecting the environment should be a greater priority. They found that, in countries with higher<\/strong><\/em> levels of environmental spending, their public was less<\/strong><\/em> likely to support prioritizing the environment over the economy.in countries with higher levels of environmental spending, their public was less<\/em> likely to support prioritizing the environment over the economy.<\/span> This effect was especially impacted by people who expressed relatively less trust in government.\u00a0The authors suggest that people may be less likely to support prioritizing the environment when their government\u2019s spending exceeds their<\/em> desired threshold. This interpretation corresponds with the \u201cthermostatic\u201d model of public opinion<\/a>, which predicts that people\u2019s opinions on government spending will move in the opposite direction of actual spending<\/strong> \u2013 or, in this case, whether they believe the current climate policies are already \u201ctoo hot\u201d or \u201ctoo cold.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marthe L. Holum & Tor G. Jakobsen, “Economic growth versus the environment: government spending, trust, and citizen support for environmental protection,” Environmental Sociology, 2024 A line of wind turbines alongside a long bike path. “Eemmeerdijk” by\u00a0Floris M. Oosterveld\u00a0is licensed under\u00a0CC BY 2.0. Which do you value more: the environment or the economy? And do you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2217,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,13,85],"tags":[140293,833,140319,140311,140303,140308,140258,140329,140344,140336,140136,140275,140315,140213,140254,140330,9015,140281,140323,140262,140271,140332,140300,140261,140290,140307,140285,140324,140306,140294,140287,140340,140320,140276,140283,140282,140342,140305,140296,140335,140279,140326,140295,140333,140272,140339,140255,140312,140299,140278,140304,140264,140302,140257,140328,140331,140309,140314,140298,140291,140338,140334,140317,140267,140288,140256,140292,140322,140341,140297,140263,140266,140310,140301,140269,140286,140337,140325,140284,140170,140318,1124,140260,140280,140313,693,139130,9084,140321,140277,140327,140268,140273,140274,140289,140343,140259,140265,140316,140270],"class_list":["post-12081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-inequality","category-politics","tag-climate-attitudes","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-change-attitudes","tag-climate-change-policy","tag-climate-governance","tag-climate-opinion","tag-climate-policy","tag-climate-policy-feedback","tag-climate-policy-trust","tag-climate-politics","tag-comparative-politics","tag-conditional-believers","tag-cross-country-comparison","tag-cross-national-study","tag-economic-growth","tag-economic-growth-priorities","tag-economic-policy","tag-economic-trade-offs","tag-economic-vs-environmental-values","tag-economy-vs-environment","tag-elite-cues","tag-environment-vs-economy","tag-environmental-activism","tag-environmental-attitudes","tag-environmental-awareness","tag-environmental-behavior","tag-environmental-communication","tag-environmental-concern","tag-environmental-decision-support","tag-environmental-decision-making","tag-environmental-economics","tag-environmental-economics-research","tag-environmental-expenditure","tag-environmental-funding","tag-environmental-governance","tag-environmental-investment","tag-environmental-investment-impact","tag-environmental-justice","tag-environmental-opinion","tag-environmental-opinion-shift","tag-environmental-policy","tag-environmental-policy-research","tag-environmental-politics","tag-environmental-preference","tag-environmental-priorities","tag-environmental-priority-change","tag-environmental-protection","tag-environmental-protection-budget","tag-environmental-protection-funding","tag-environmental-research","tag-environmental-risk-perception","tag-environmental-sociology","tag-environmental-sociology-research","tag-environmental-spending","tag-environmental-spending-analysis","tag-environmental-spending-data","tag-environmental-spending-impact","tag-environmental-spending-trends","tag-environmental-sustainability","tag-environmental-trade-off","tag-environmental-trade-off-attitudes","tag-environmental-trust-gap","tag-environmental-values","tag-gdp-spending","tag-government-priorities","tag-government-spending","tag-government-trust","tag-green-economy","tag-green-policy","tag-green-spending","tag-marthe-holum","tag-oecd-countries","tag-policy-and-opinion","tag-policy-attitudes","tag-policy-feedback","tag-policy-impact","tag-policy-reaction","tag-policy-response","tag-political-behavior","tag-political-economy","tag-political-ideology","tag-political-science","tag-political-trust","tag-public-attitudes","tag-public-engagement","tag-public-opinion","tag-public-perception","tag-public-policy","tag-public-priorities","tag-public-trust","tag-public-trust-and-environment","tag-renewable-energy","tag-soft-environmentalists","tag-sustainability","tag-sustainability-politics","tag-sustainable-policy","tag-thermostatic-model","tag-tor-jakobsen","tag-trust-in-government","tag-wind-turbines"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2217"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12081"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12092,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12081\/revisions\/12092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/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