Nearly one in two people in Germany would be willing to contribute one percent of their monthly income, month after month, to more effective climate protection. Politicians assume the share is far smaller: on average, they guess around 18 percent. Between that assumption and reality — the true figure is almost 48 percent — lies a striking gap. And that gap, a new study suggests, may itself act as a brake on ambitious climate policy.
For the study, Wilhelm Hofmann of Ruhr University Bochum and Timur Sevincer of Leuphana University Lüneburg surveyed around 1,600 elected representatives and compared their estimates with the answers of more than 2,000 citizens. The finding is clear-cut: across almost the entire party spectrum, those in political office underestimate how much support effective climate measures enjoy among the public.
The biggest misjudgement where it matters most
The representatives were most mistaken precisely about the measures that would achieve the most: people's willingness to accept binding laws and to contribute financially themselves. Support for effective climate laws was underestimated by lawmakers by more than a quarter of the response scale. "The largest perception gap was not on the question of whether climate change is a problem," Hofmann stresses — but where people would have to act themselves or back more ambitious rules.
Citizens, too, misjudged the figures, though they came considerably closer to reality than the politicians did. Behind the pattern lies a long-recognised phenomenon in social psychology, so-called pluralistic ignorance: a majority wrongly assumes that most others think differently than they do.
Why is this more than an academic footnote? Earlier research shows that politics is guided not only by officials' own convictions but also by what they believe their voters want. If that picture is distorted, ambitious climate protection can appear riskier than it would prove at the ballot box. The real hurdle, the researchers conclude, may not be a lack of support — but the mistaken belief that it is missing. And that is exactly where the good news lies: the public backing is already there. It simply needs to be seen for what it is.