430. Polarised public opinion
When assessing projects or policies using tools like Benefit-Cost Analysis, economists sometimes need to gauge public attitudes towards those projects or policies. Usually we summarise their attitudes as an average “willingness to pay” across the population, but sometimes this hides the fact that there are polarised attitudes within the community.
A new study led by Curtis Rollins describes a method of recognising and unpacking polarised attitudes (Rollins et al. 2025).
He looked at projects for renewable energy and fracking in the province of Alberta in Canada. Alberta is the ideal place to look at polarised attitudes on these issues, for reasons spelled out in the paper.
Alberta is one of the world’s largest oil-producing regions. The oil and gas industry accounts for approximately one-quarter of the Albertan gross domestic product and 90% of the province’s electricity production. At the same time, the renewable energy industry, in particular wind and solar, is undergoing rapid growth. … Debates over the province’s energy mix and energy transitions are a source of tension and conflict, particularly between those supporting transitions to renewable energy and those who support growing the fossil fuel industry.
The study used a “vignette” approach, in which participants were asked questions like the following:
The bolded/italicised text was varied between being highly favourable, highly unfavourable and in between, for each type of project.
The responses to the fracking question were quite polarised, with a similar large share of respondents selecting zero or 10 (Figure 2), indicating strong opposition or strong support, respectively.
It was clear that some respondents were not really thinking about the scenario that was put to them – they were determined to indicate strong opposition or strong support no matter what. From his statistical analysis, Curtis concluded that 11% of respondents were Unconditional Opposers and 7% were Unconditional Supporters. These were people who rated all scenarios at or near zero or at or near 10, no matter how extreme the scenario. It was amusing to see people expressing support for fracking in a scenario where the fracking would occur close to their home, involving more than 50 heavy trucks passing by each day, operating all hours of the day, providing no financial benefits to the community, and resulting in seismic events severe enough to cause moderate structural damage to their home!
Of course some respondents made more considered responses. Curtis classified them as the Middle class (36% of the sample), Critical Opposers (14% of the sample), and Critical Supporters (33% of the sample)
Responses to the wind-energy vignette are shown in Figure 3. In this case, Unconditional Opposers represent 8% of the sample, while Unconditional Supporters represent 6% of the sample. The remaining classes appeared to react to scenario attributes when determining their ratings, including the Middle class (60% of the sample), Critical Opposers (14% of the sample), and Critical Supporters (12% of the sample)
I haven’t explained the method of statistical analysis that Curtis developed, but you can read about it in the paper, which is open access (here).
The approach is potentially relevant in any study looking at public attitudes towards controversial issues like energy and climate change. It’s worth digging into polarisation in these cases because, as the authors say:
Failure to account for polarisation may lead to biased statistical results, or a failure to uncover important nuances in the distribution and formation of opinions and attitudes across the sample. In either case, testing for and modelling polarisation can provide more robust and insightful results to decision-makers, by providing a better appraisal of how policy changes might affect public acceptance, and who may or may not be willing to change their opinions.
Further reading
Rollins, C.A., Doll, C.A., Anders, S., Burton, M.P. and Pannell, D.J. (2025). Opinion poles: Polarised views on energy developments in Canada’s oil province. Energy Research and Social Science 125, 104069. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2025.104069 (open access)
This could be likened to the situation of rusted on Labor and Liberal voters, where no matter what policy you put in front of them they will not change their vote from Labor or Liberal. Yet there are those who are the swinging voters who generally assess policy options put forward by parties or independents and then make a decision on which way to vote. Those who aren’t truly and unequivocally opposed or in support may be referred to as the silent majority. And therein lies the conundrum; they are the silent majority. Perhaps the way around this is not to offer polarised opposite scenarios in the first place but to engage with communities to understand and agree on the problem, put all the options on the table, assess them transparently and rigourously using agreed criteria and then decide on a way forward. This approach in Water Forever Perth’s 5” yr supply and demand strategy brought an end to polarised debate over canals from the Kimberley, energy in a glass (desalination) and drinking recycled water. Food for thought.