Techno-Optimism Reduces Willingness to Address Climate Change

Technological innovation is essential for mitigating climate change, but so are wider socio-economic transformations as well as lifestyle changes. Techno-optimism, the belief that technological innovation alone is sufficient to address climate change, may reduce public willingness to engage in climate action. Here we use a structural causal model to estimate the causal effect of techno-optimism on willingness to contribute 1\% of one's monthly household income to address climate change using a large, population-weighted sample from the Netherlands (N = 23, 395). We find that being a techno-optimist reduces the probability of being willing to contribute by 18.7% (95% CI: 15.6, 20.7). In addition, we find that the causal effect is much smaller for respondents on the political right, where overall willingness is already very low. We close by discussing the importance of adequately framing the role of technology when discussing climate change mitigation.