Boasting much but doing little? Examining the influence of political ideology on carbon footprint in the U.S

Abstract

This article mainly analyzes the per capita household carbon footprint of 381 counties in the United States in 2012 and the energy consumption carbon footprint per capita of 992 counties in 2015. The research takes the counties won by the Democratic Party as the treatment group and the counties won by the Republican Party as the control group. Income per capita, floor area per capita, average number of household members, energy intensity, and social demographic variables are controlled in the regression. This research also considered fixed effects of states during the analysis. After passing the robustness test, the outcome shows that areas with more Democrats indeed have less household energy carbon footprint per capita. This result shows that supporters of parties with strong environmental stances exhibit slightly better green behavior.