Understanding climate politics requires more than just individual beliefs; it demands insight into how political actors perceive others' opinions on the matter. This study fills a critical gap by examining second-order climate beliefs—beliefs about what others believe—in six new opinion surveys from China and the United States.

Data & Methods

Drawing from six new surveys conducted across the mass publics, political elites (including US members of Congress), and intellectual elites in both countries. Surveys were administered via online platforms with stratified sampling to represent diverse demographics and professional backgrounds within each country.

Key Findings

• All classes of actors exhibit egocentric bias: overestimating agreement on pro-climate policies among peers while underestimating overall public support across the political spectrum in both countries.

• These biases are more pronounced when responding to politically moderate survey questions compared to ideologically charged ones.

Experimental Evidence

Updating second-order beliefs significantly increases individual willingness to support climate policies—a finding with substantial implications for understanding policy implementation delays. Results indicate that misperceptions about public opinion can be a key barrier to effective environmental governance.

This research suggests political scientists should incorporate belief updating dynamics into their analyses of climate politics, and demonstrates how insights from this niche area could enhance our understanding of collective action problems more broadly.