As political polarization has accelerated over the past decade, both Congress and the general population have become increasingly divided on policies for environmental protection. This division may be due to the recent trend of political affiliation being treated as a social identity from which to base ideological beliefs about the existence of climate change as well as the need for environmental programs targeting plastic consumption (Dunlap et al., 2016). We hypothesized that participants that classified themselves as Democrats would show more support for climate and plastic policies than participants that classified themselves as Republicans. We recruited a sample of 251 participants from MTurk. 179 participants classified themselves as either Democrat (n = 120) or Republican (n = 59) and were examined in this study. The study sample was predominantly male (59%), with an average age of 35 years old. Participants indicated their support for 4 items relating to Plastic Policy Support (α = .86) and 6 items relating to Climate Policy Support (α = .86). Republicans scored significantly lower than Democrats on Plastic Policy Support Score (p = .027) and Climate Policy Support Scale (p = .001). However, when we examined the individual items that made up the scales, Republicans did not differ from Democrats in their support for several specific policies. These results indicate that while political identity may contribute to the division in beliefs about overall climate and plastic policies, support for policies targeting specific pro-environmental policies may not be influenced by party affiliation
