Trusting the Green Transition: Public Attitudes Towards Just Transition in the European Context

The concept of Just Transition (JT) highlights the importance of implementing climate policies that are both fair and inclusive, ensuring that all groups are supported during the transition to greener economies. While JT policies are increasingly recognized as essential components of climate action, international differences in public support for these policies remain almost entirely unexplored. JT policies often require providing assistance to vulnerable groups, which depends on public institutions' ability to fairly and efficiently distribute these benefits. As a result, variations in institutional trust across countries could significantly shape public support for such programs. Using a merged dataset from the European Social Survey Cronos-2 (2023) and ESS Round 10, we analyze public attitudes towards JT policy across twelve European countries, controlling for cross-national differences through country fixed effects. Our regression models indicate that political trust and institutional trust are positively associated with support for JT policies. Additionally, we find that the trust-as-heuristics thesis, which posits that trust is particularly crucial for policies involving risk or sacrifice, does not hold true when examining political or institutional trust in the context of JT policies. We conclude that trust is a more stable factor in determining support for JT policies, whether they involve general support or entail clear personal costs that benefit others rather than oneself.