Intersectional climate perceptions: Understanding the impacts of race and gender on climate experiences, future concerns, and planning efforts

Abstract

Climate change impacts are intensifying social inequalities locally and globally. Exposure to climate risks, as well as the ability to prepare for and recover from them, are affected by complex power structures. An expanding body of literature uses an intersectional lens to explicate a more nuanced understanding of how co-constituted power structures manufacture differential climate vulnerabilities. Despite the increasing focus on intersectional approaches to institutionalized climate planning, there are limited quantitative studies examining how the co-constituted processes of being racialized and gendered influence climate change perceptions in the United States. In contribution to these conversations, we examine how race and gender together shape experiences of climate impacts, perceptions of future risk, and desires for adaptation actors in Austin, Texas. Using a survey of Austin area households, we explored climate perceptions including residents self-reported experience of four types of climate events, assessment of changing climate risks, overall climate change concerns, and desires for resilience actions by a variety of actors. Our research suggests that race and gender, income levels, and political party are related to which climate events people report experiencing, their perception of changes to various climate risks, their overall climate concern, and their support for various climate adaptation actors.