American evangelicals and global warming

Abstract

American evangelicals have long played a significant role in American culture and politics. Drawing from a nationally representative survey, this article describes American evangelicals’ global warming risk assessments and policy preferences and tests several theory-based factors hypothesized to influence their views. American evangelicals are less likely than non-evangelicals to believe that global warming is happening, caused mostly by human activities, and causing serious harm, yet a majority of evangelicals are concerned about climate change and support a range of climate change and energy related policies. Multiple regression analyses found that the combination of biospheric, altruistic, and egoistic value orientations is a more significant predictor of evangelicals’ risk assessments and policy support than negative affect, egalitarian or individualistic worldviews, or socio-demographic variables.