Abstract
A long history of interdisciplinary research highlights the powerful role that human values play in shaping individuals' engagement with environmental issues. That certain values are supportive of proenvironmental orientation and behavior is now well established. But as the challenge of communicating the risks of climate change has grown increasingly urgent, there has been a rise in interest around how values shape public engagement with this issue. In the current paper, we review the growing body of work that explores the role of human values (and the closely related concept of cultural worldviews) in public engagement with climate change. Following a brief conceptual overview of values and their relationship to environmental engagement in general, we then provide a review of the literature linking value‐orientations and engagement with climate change. We also review both academic and ‘gray’ literature from civil society organizations that has focused on how public messages about climate change should be framed, and discuss the significance of research on human values for climate change communication strategies.This article is categorized under: Perceptions, Behavior, and Communication of Climate Change > Perceptions of Climate Change
Highlights
As the risks posed by anthropogenic climate change have become increasingly well documented,[1] the urgency of engaging the public around these risks has grown.[2,3,4,5] Research has focused on a wide variety of topics, including the congruence between proenvironmental attitudes and behavior[6]; the ideological determinants of climate change risk perceptions[7]; the social factors affecting the performance of low-carbon behaviors[8]; the many
Despite the relatively short space of time in which climate change has occupied a prominent place in wires.wiley.com/climatechange public and policy discourse, a substantial literature focusing on the role played by human values in determining public engagement with climate change has quickly emerged
The contribution of the current paper has been to provide the first review of this literature, as well as discussing a number of important practical implications for campaigns and initiatives seeking to engage the public around climate change
Summary
As the risks posed by anthropogenic climate change have become increasingly well documented,[1] the urgency of engaging the public around these risks has grown.[2,3,4,5] Research has focused on a wide variety of topics, including the congruence between proenvironmental attitudes and behavior[6]; the ideological determinants of climate change risk perceptions[7]; the social factors affecting the performance of low-carbon behaviors[8]; the many. Despite several significant overviews and summaries of research on public engagement with climate change,[3,4,10,11,12] there has been no systematic review of the role of human values in shaping public engagement with climate change. This is surprising, given the recent rise in interest around this issue.[13,14,15,16,17] The renewed interest has been driven by a seemingly simple question: are there certain values on which public engagement with climate change is (or should be) predicated?. We review the literature on the role of values in public engagement with climate change . Wires.wiley.com/climatechange framed (including closely related research on cultural worldviews and risk perceptions),[18] and highlight the significance and implications of research on human values for improving the effectiveness of communication strategies
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