The relationships of political ideology and party affiliation with environmental concern: A meta-analysis

- Meta-analyses reveal relationships of political party and ideology with environmental concern.
- Corrected effect sizes for party and ideology are ρ' = 0.30 and ρ' = 0.67, respectively.
- The relationship with ideology is unmoderated by coded study characteristics.
- The relationship with party is moderated by year and perhaps by education level.
- Together, the results provide evidence of partisan sorting on environmental issues.

This study reports the results of two meta-analyses investigating the relationships between environmental concern and both political party affiliation and political ideology. Political party affiliation was found to have a substantial association with environmental concern (ρ = 0.22), as was political ideology (ρ = 0.27). Both relationships could also be corrected for error of measurement and restriction in range, yielding corrected effect sizes of ρ' = 0.30 and ρ' = 0.67, respectively. There was no evidence that coded study variables moderated the relationship with political ideology. Conversely, the analyses demonstrated strong evidence that the relationship with political affiliation was moderated by the year in which the study was conducted, as well as some evidence that education level was an additional moderator. Altogether, the results also suggest that the strengthening relationship between political affiliation and environmental concern is due primarily to partisan sorting, rather than to issue polarization on environmental issues.