About

Matto Mildenberger is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, affiliated with the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. His research focuses on political science related to environmental issues, as indicated by his association with the Bren School, which specializes in environmental science and management. His contact information includes an email address (mildenberger@polsci.ucsb.edu) and a physical office location in Ellison 3706 at UCSB. The page highlights his role as a faculty member involved in research and teaching within the field of environmental politics and policy.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Economics
• Law
• Political economy
• Sociology
• Natural resource economics
• Public economics
• Public administration
• Ecology
• Geography
• Law and economics
• Epistemology
• Positive economics
• Economic growth

Selected publications

• Lessons from a multi-country research project on climate and health policy integration

  The Journal of Climate Change and Health · 2026-03-01

  articleOpen access

  Introduction: Climate change and public health present interlinked challenges that could be more effectively addressed through stronger integration of climate and health policies. In this case report, we reflect on the process of developing and implementing a complex, multinational climate and health research project on a compressed timeframe. This research examined challenges and possibilities for climate-health policy and involved in-depth interviews with high-level policy stakeholders. Methodology: Drawing on interviews with our research partners conducted after the project's conclusion, we describe some of the benefits and challenges of using a centralized "hub and spoke" co-production model to manage international research collaborations. Findings: While this approach enabled us to balance expediency with collaborative decision-making, it can raise tensions between standardization and adaptability of research methodologies. We also describe external challenges such as accelerated timelines and administrative hurdles and provide insights into our approaches to dealing with these challenges. Conclusion: We conclude by offering project management lessons for other international research collaborations.

  PublisherDOI

• The Illusion of “Apolitical” Climate Policy

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2025-08-07

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Around the world, countries have set up climate institutions that putatively “depoliticize” climate policymaking, removing decisions from the realm of partisan politics or delegating decisions to technocratic bodies. Here, we offer an empirical reassessment of such apolitical institutions in the UK, Norway, Denmark, and Australia. We find that what seems in many cases like depoliticization – upon closer examination – proves anything but. Instead, we offer a reinterpretation of climate advisory institutions as the path-dependent product of distributive and partisan conflicts. New climate institutions did not emerge merely as a result of norms about public goods provision and efforts to reshape intertemporal policymaking incentives, to provide stability, or to solve the gap between current and future welfare needs. Instead, these institutions addressed core distributive conflicts over climate policy, the short- or medium-term political needs of incumbent governments, or both. In turn, we argue that this political context surrounding their creation has limited the degree to which they can stabilize policy over time or depoliticize climate policy debates.

  PublisherDOI

• Public opinion foundations of the clean energy transition

  Environmental Politics · 2025-06-02 · 9 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• How publics in small-island states view climate change and international responses to it

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2025-07-25 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Climate change caused by carbon pollution from the world's largest economies poses an existential threat to small-island states and territories this century. These places bear virtually no responsibility for climate change but will face sea-level rise, fresh water resource degradation, and intensified storms that will kill or dislocate exposed publics, and damage local economies. To alleviate this crisis, the global community has begun discussing who is responsible for climate mitigation and adaptation costs for those affected by climate change, in addition to continued debates around the distribution of responsibility for climate change. Missing from this analysis, however, are systematic efforts to elicit the preferences and perceptions of publics in these threatened small-island states and territories. Here, we report results from a large-sample (n [Formula: see text] 14,710) cross-national survey of publics living in climate-vulnerable states and territories, conducted in June-July 2022. By quota sampling through Facebook's ad platform, we generate survey samples at the national or territorial level for publics in 55 small-island states, territories, and subnational regions in the South Pacific, Indian Ocean, and Caribbean. We find widespread awareness and concern about the threat posed by climate change and sea-level rise, in contrast to what existing research finds in the Global North. We also find that climate-vulnerable publics believe their home governments, large polluters, and former colonial powers are all responsible for helping to manage the climate crisis, irrespective of these actors' relative carbon emissions. These findings fill an important gap by depicting climate beliefs among the communities at the frontlines of climate change.

  PublisherDOI

• Public Opinion Foundations of the Clean Energy Transition

  2025-05-19

  preprintOpen access

  Popular debates about political barriers to the energy transition increasingly acknowledge the mass public's role, but often summarize its importance with amorphous concepts like "political" or "public will." This essay clarifies how the public's beliefs, preferences, and behaviors affect the clean energy transition through three channels: policymaker incentives, electoral selection, and technology adoption and siting. In turn, we consider how energy and climate policy design can influence mass public preferences, emphasizing cost and benefit visibility, public perceptions of distributional effects, and cross-domain policy linkages. Drawing from our framework, we outline priorities for public opinion research on the clean energy transition.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Global geographic variation in climate concern at national and sub-national scales

  2025-06-30

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Addressing global climate change requires policy action by governments in every country and at every geographic scale. Yet, we lack systematic data on climate change opinions around the world, particularly at the sub-national scales critical to many policy processes. Here, we model country and sub-national concern about climate change using a Bayesian item response theory model. We draw on almost 3.9 million survey responses from 97 surveys conducted between 2002 and 2023. We estimate public concern about climate change in 166 countries and 2,188 sub-national regions, representing 97.9% of the global population. Our results indicate substantial heterogeneity in climate concern, both nationally and sub-nationally. We highlight strong sub-national heterogeneity in climate concern in some of the countries most pivotal to global climate action, contrasted with relative homogeneity in other places. Our findings offer an important resource for policymakers, scientists, advocates, and educators working to address climate change and plan for its impacts.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Advancing and integrating climate and health policy in the United States: Insights from national policy stakeholders

  The Journal of Climate Change and Health · 2025-09-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Introduction: Many experts have called for integrating climate policy with health policy. We investigated U.S. federal policy stakeholders' views on these goals and strategies for achieving them. Materials and methods: We conducted 65 semi-structured interviews from January 2024 to April 2024 with stakeholders working on climate policy, health policy, the climate-health intersection, and related areas. We performed a qualitative content analysis of these interviews. Results: Most stakeholders perceived that federal climate policy and health policy were mostly separate, but were becoming more integrated. They believed further integration could increase support for climate policy and maximize its health benefits. Barriers included lack of funding; competing priorities; conservative opposition; low public awareness; lack of data; and silos in federal agencies and professional communities. Opportunities included growing awareness and policy support; new funding sources, data, and technologies; the president's ability to take executive actions; policy windows in diverse sectors, including agriculture, transportation, and housing; and potential healthcare cost savings. Proposed strategies included enhancing communication, education, and research; strengthening intra- and interagency initiatives; participatory policymaking; mobilizing existing funding; focusing first on politically feasible policies; and persistent advocacy. Discussion: These results extend previous observations of separations between climate policy and health policy and suggest ways to address these separations. Conclusion: There is potential to integrate U.S. federal climate policy and health policy, and doing so is perceived as advantageous by most. While there are barriers to climate-health policy integration and advancement, there are also promising opportunities, which may be more relevant under future presidential administrations or at the sub-federal level.

  PublisherDOI

• Survey sampling in the Global South using Facebook advertisements

  Political Science Research and Methods · 2025-04-02 · 9 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Survey research in the Global South has traditionally required large budgets and lengthy fieldwork. The expansion of digital connectivity presents an opportunity for researchers to engage global subject pools and study settings where in-person contact is challenging. This paper evaluates Facebook advertisements as a tool to recruit diverse survey samples in the Global South. Using Facebook’s advertising platform, we quota-sample respondents in Mexico, Kenya, and Indonesia and assess how well these samples perform on a range of survey indicators, identify sources of bias, replicate a canonical experiment, and highlight trade-offs for researchers to consider. This method can quickly and cheaply recruit respondents, but these samples tend to be more educated than corresponding national populations. Weighting ameliorates sample imbalances. This method generates comparable data to a commercial online sample for a fraction of the cost. Our analysis demonstrates the potential of Facebook advertisements to cost-effectively conduct research in diverse settings.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Public Opinion Foundations of the Clean Energy Transition

  2025-03-26 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Popular debates about political barriers to the energy transition increasingly acknowledge the mass public's role, but often summarize its importance with amorphous concepts like "political" or "public will." This review essay clarifies how the public's beliefs, preferences, and behaviors affect the clean energy transition through three channels: policymaker incentives, electoral selection, and technology adoption and siting. In turn, we consider how energy and climate policy design can influence mass public preferences, emphasizing cost and benefit visibility, public perceptions of distributional effects, and cross-domain policy linkages. Drawing from our review, we outline priorities for public opinion research on the clean energy transition.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Survey sampling in the Global South using Facebook advertisements – CORRIGENDUM

  Political Science Research and Methods · 2025-05-14

  erratumOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Leah Stokes

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  44 shared

• Parrish Bergquist

  Georgetown University

  39 shared

• Peter D. Howe

  Utah State University

  22 shared

• Jennifer R. Marlon

  Yale University

  14 shared

• Anthony Leiserowitz

  Yale University

  11 shared

• Stephen Clarkson

  University of Alabama at Birmingham

  11 shared

• Chris Miljanich

  7 shared

• Kathryn Harrison

  7 shared

Education

• PhD , School of Forestry and Environmental Studies

  Yale University

  2015