What shapes cognitions of climate change in Europe? Ideology, morality, and the role of educational attainment

Heinz Welsch

doi:10.1007/s13412-021-00745-7

Abstract

Cognitions about climate change are of critical importance for climate change mitigation as they influence climate-relevant behaviors and the support of climate policy. Using about 30,000 observations from a large-scale representative survey from 23 European countries, this study provides two major findings. First, important policy-relevant climate change cognitions do not only differ by individuals’ ideological identity (left versus right) but—independently—by their moral identity, that is, the pattern of endorsement of the moral foundations: Care, Fairness, Liberty, Loyalty, Authority, and Purity/Sanctity. In particular, controlling for ideological position, the cognitions that the world climate is changing, that climate change is human-made, and that climate change impacts are bad are significantly negatively related to stronger endorsement of the Authority and Sanctity foundations while being positively related to stronger endorsement of the Loyalty and Fairness foundations. Second, not only the ideology-related cognitive divide but the morality-related divide is larger in individuals with tertiary education, consistent with the idea that individuals with greater science literacy and numeracy use these skills to adjust their cognitions to their group identity. The finding that better education may amplify rather than attenuate the ideology and morality dependence of decision-relevant climate change cognitions sheds doubt on the proposition that better education unambiguously furthers the prospects for climate change mitigation.

Highlights

Cognitions about climate change are highly relevant for climate change mitigation for at least two reasons (Gifford 2011): First, people unaware of or skeptic about the existence, origins and impacts of climate change are unlikely to take measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions or support public policies to protect the climate
The cognitions that the world climate is changing, that climate change is human-made, and that climate change impacts are bad are positively correlated with the level of education, but the correlations are very low (r < 0.1)
The cognition that individual mitigation behaviors are effective is significantly positively related to stronger endorsement of the Care, Fairness, Authority, and Sanctity foundations and significantly negatively related to stronger endorsement of the Liberty and Loyalty foundations. These relationships are not significantly moderated by the level of education, except for the case of Fairness where the morality-cognition relationship is significantly stronger in better educated people. These results suggest that moral identity plays a role in shaping climate change cognitions, as does ideological identity, and that both types of relationship are moderated by education

Summary

Introduction

Cognitions about climate change are highly relevant for climate change mitigation for at least two reasons (Gifford 2011): First, people unaware of or skeptic about the existence, origins and impacts of climate change are unlikely to take measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions or support public policies to protect the climate. Even among those who are aware of the problem, a lack of knowledge about the cause and extent of climate change may lead to ignorance about which (individual and collective) actions are available and how effective different actions are. Political ideology and affiliation are stronger predictors of climate change belief than any other demographic variable (Hornsey et al 2016)

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Conclusion