Polarized opinions on Covid-19 and environmental policy measures. The role of social media use and personal concerns in German-speaking countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis are polarizing people's opinions worldwide, particularly with regard to restrictive policy measures. We examine the effects of social media use and personal concerns on opinions toward selected COVID-19 and environmental measures, and whether public opinion toward the two crises shows similar polarization patterns. The data is derived from an online survey conducted in German-speaking countries in the summer of 2020. Our analyses show that opinions toward COVID-19 measures are more polarized than toward environmental measures, and that personal concerns play a far greater role than social media use in shaping opinions toward policy measures for both crises. Only few platforms show significant and divergent effects, which we attribute to their different characteristics and potentials for the emergence of filter bubbles and echo chambers. We also observe a generational effect, suggesting that older individuals are more likely to support COVID-19 measures, while younger generations tend to do so for environmental measures. Furthermore, we find an unexpectedly high number of people who are completely opposed to all policy measures for both crises, again mainly due to personal concerns and attitudes. The results are discussed in the context of the time period in which the survey was conducted, as well as in relation to current developments, and from the perspective of the free-rider problem as a possible explanation for the one-sided polarization observed.