Support for climate change adaptation over climate change mitigation in the United States depends on political party identification and how adaptation is framed

Adaptation to the negative consequences of climate change is of increasing relevance. Yet, there have been relatively few studies of how opinions about adaptation differ from opinions about climate change mitigation. This is particularly the case when it comes to groups that tend to oppose action on climate change, such as, in the United States, members of the Republican Party. The present study presents two preregistered experiments on samples of U.S. adults. The first compares Republicans’ support for adaptation and their support for mitigation across their beliefs, policy attitudes, and behavioral intentions. It also tests how framing adaptation as a response to extreme weather versus a response to climate change impacts Republicans’ opinions. The second experiment replicates the first one and includes comparison data from Democrats. We find that Republicans express more support for adaptation than mitigation, particularly when adaptation is framed as a response to extreme weather, across all outcomes except behavior. In contrast, we show that the framing effect does not manifest for Democrats, who in fact exhibit stronger support for mitigation than adaptation. We conclude that focusing on adaptation as a response to extreme weather could help build an effective climate change coalition in the United States inclusive of Republicans. However, doing so introduces a tension in that it could minimize attention to addressing longer term climate change consequences that align with Democrats’ priorities.