Global Warming's Five Germanys – Revisited and Framed in an International Context

Abstract

ABSTRACT Climate change is one of the primary challenges facing humanity and a topic of controversial public debates. Research on public attitudes toward climate change has a long tradition in social and communication science across different countries. In that field, segmentation analysis has become an important approach. However, the wide variety of methodological approaches and analytical strategies hamper cross-national comparisons. Against this background, we segmented the German population based on their attitudes toward climate change, using a methodological approach similarly employed in international studies as well, thus ensuring better comparability than prior studies. Based on a nationwide representative online survey (N = 999; fielded in 2021) and latent class analysis, we identified five segments: the Alarmed Actives, Convinced, Cautious, Disengaged, and Dismissive. International comparison yields interesting differences: Compared to the U.S. or Australia, e.g. no segment in Germany consists of climate change deniers; rather, the Dismissive group exhibits a German-specific, moderate form of skepticism.