Data collected using keyword searches in Google news indicates that concern over global warming is waning
24th August 2010
"Is concern for the environment a luxury good?"
Matthew E. Kahn and Matthew J. Kotchen present data from google searches of the words 'global warming' and 'unemployment' by US users. They display an alarming trend as public concern moves away from climate change in the face of the recession:
Google Insights is a publically available online tool for tracking aggregate Google search activity over time for specific geographic areas. Recent research shows that Google search terms are a powerful tool to predict public health epidemics (Pelat et al. 2009 and Valdiva and Monge-Carella 2010) and economic activity (Choi and Varian 2009, D’Amuri and Marcucci 2009, and Varian 2009). Given the current macroeconomic situation – the end of 2007 was the beginning of the most significant economic downturn in the US since the Great Depression – this tool provides a lever for studying the relationship between the business cycle and public opinion.
In particular, the US has experienced substantial erosion in public concern about environmental issues. To what extent do recessions affect public opinion about the environment?
In recent research (Kahn and Kotchen 2010), we use data on Google searches as a measure of public opinion in order to investigate how changes in the business cycle affect interest in the headline environmental issue of the day, climate change. Using data from Google Insights, we have created a weekly database from January 2004 through February 2010 of keyword searches by state for two terms – “global warming” and “unemployment.” We then ask the question: How do changes in a state’s unemployment rate affect internet search activity for these two keywords within the state?
We find that higher unemployment rates within a state decrease internet search activity for global warming, but increase search activity for unemployment. Based on this revealed preference for interest in global warming, therefore, it appears that recessions crowd out concern for the environment, while not surprisingly increasing concern about unemployment. Interestingly, the magnitudes of the two effects are very similar despite having opposite signs, which is at least consistent with the notion that one crowds out the other.
Red states and blue states
Given the well-known ideological divide between “red states” and “blue states” in the US on environmental issues, we also explore how overall state political ideology affects the association between state unemployment rates and Google searches. For each state, we collect additional data on the share of votes cast for the Democrat John Kerry in the 2004 Presidential Election. We find that in more Democratic leaning states, the decline in global-warming searches is larger, but the increase in unemployment searches is smaller. One possible explanation for the former result is that Republican concern about climate change is simply lower and less variable.
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