How and when higher climate change risk perception promotes less climate change inaction

Abstract

Climate change has been positioned as one of the most severe environmental threats facing us today. To address climate change, enhancing climate change risk perception and reducing climate change inaction are both critical. However, little research has touched on the issue of whether climate change risk perception is linked to climate change inaction in a negative manner. Moreover, there is still much unknown about the complex process behind this relationship, and the boundary conditions of this process awaits clarification. To address these gaps in the literature, two studies were conducted to first confirm the possible negative association between climate change risk perception and climate change inaction and, second, explore through a parallel mediational model whether climate change belief and environmental efficacy mediate simultaneously the relation between climate change risk perception and climate change inaction. Finally, a moderated sequential mediational model was used to investigate whether climate change risk perception is associated with climate change inaction through the sequential mediation of climate change belief and environmental efficacy, and to clarify underlying boundary conditions by analyzing the moderation of mindfulness as well. The results showed that, as expected, higher levels of climate change risk perception were related to less climate change inaction, and this relation was mediated by enhanced climate change belief and heightened environmental efficacy in a sequential manner. Furthermore, the sequential mediating effect of climate change belief and environmental efficacy was stronger among those who had a higher level of mindfulness. These findings advance the emerging research on climate change inaction by elucidating the mechanisms underlying the effect of climate change risk perception. Moreover, they extend the Domain-Context-Behavior (DCB) model and Gateway belief model (GBM). In practice, climate change education and climate change inaction interventions can be designed and implemented to nudge clean production, green supply chain and green consumption, which finally contribute to sustainable development and the ‘green transformation’ of society.