Belief In Anthropogenic Climate Change Research Articles

In the Eye of the Storm: Hurricanes, Climate Migration, and Climate Attitudes

Climate disasters raise the salience of climate change’s negative consequences, including climate-induced migration. Policy action to address climate displacement is especially contentious in the United States, where weak support for tackling climate change intersects with high opposition to migration. Do climate disasters foster receptivity toward climate migrants and broader willingness to combat climate change? To study this question, we leverage the occurrence of Hurricane Ian during fielding of a preregistered survey in autumn 2022. Hurricane exposure increased concern about and support for policies to address climate migration. Hurricane exposure also increased support for climate action and belief in anthropogenic climate change. Effects of hurricane exposure cross-cut partisanship, education, age, and other important correlates of climate attitudes but decay within 6 months. Together, these results suggest that climate disasters may briefly increase favorability toward climate migrants and climate policy action but are unlikely to durably mobilize support even in severely impacted areas.

Pope Francis the Roman Catholic Church and citizen attitudes towards climate change in Latin America

Studies on the relationship between religious attitudes and attitudes towards climate change and other environmental issues have tended to focus on the United States. While there is good reason to expect such a relationship to exist, our understanding of it is limited first and foremost by the limited number of country-comparative studies. This study aims to reduce this gap by investigating how trust in the Church and evaluations of Pope Francis affect the views of Latin Americans on anthropogenic climate change. Our study is based on data from the 2017 Latinobarómetro with 13,472 respondents based in 18 Latin American countries. Our findings reveal that Roman Catholics are less likely to believe in manmade climate change as compared to evangelical Christians and respondents belonging to no or any other denomination. We obtain the same negative relationship between trust in the (Catholic) Church and belief in anthropogenic climate change. However, favourable assessments of Pope Francis have a positive effect, and this assessment also has a positive moderating effect on the impact of trust in the Church on the outcome variable. These findings have important implications for climate policies, as they suggest that the public demand for climate action might increase if the Roman Catholic Church in their regional dioceses, rather than mostly the Pope, were to take and communicate a more coherent, affirmative position on climate change.

Does Wildfire Exposure Influence Corporate Disaster Preparedness? A Study of Natural Resources Extraction Firms in Canada

Managers must make critical disaster preparation decisions to protect firm assets from the threat of wildfire activity. Prior literature stresses the importance of past disaster experience as a key driver of disaster preparation. The article finds that, while experience with disasters is a critical condition, it is insufficient to explain disaster preparation activities by firms. Managerial perceptions including belief in anthropogenic climate change and the perception of increasing wildfires can substitute for direct negative wildfire experience. The article builds configural theory to explain how the psychological “closeness” of wildfire hazards can influence managerial decisions to prepare for disasters in the presence of key organizational characteristics. This study adopts a qualitative comparative analytical approach, drawing on manager surveys and biophysical wildfire data from 20 Canadian mining and resource extraction sites. The article also contrasts manager perceptions of wildfire risk with those of experts and captures a gap in risk perception.

Regenerative farming as climate action

Regenerative agriculture is an alternative approach to farming that has been gaining traction and interest among farmers due to its potential to reduce input costs, improve soil health, and increase the resilience of farming systems. This paper undertakes a practice-based analysis of farmers, applying a lens of regenerative agriculture. Surveys were developed as a part of a broader project using an established methodological framework. Topics were developed and adapted with input from local stakeholders before being mailed out to three farming regions across Australia (the Western Australian Wheatbelt, the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia and Central West New South Wales). The research clustered farmers into two groups: those who are using best-practices that fall inside the scope of regenerative agriculture, and those who are not. The similarities and differences in farmer attributes, as well as self-reported knowledge levels and information sources used by each group are explored. Results indicate that a belief in anthropogenic climate change may be one of the primary divides between the two groups, and therefore a possible driver of best-practice implementation. The findings provide insight into perceptions of regenerative agriculture for Australian farmers, and may assist with knowledge dissemination amongst those managing our environment.

The Impact of Extreme Precipitation Events and Their Variability on Climate Change Beliefs in the American Public

Abstract Although scientists agree that climate change is anthropogenic, differing interpretations of evidence in a highly polarized sociopolitical environment impact how individuals perceive climate change. While prior work suggests that individuals experience climate change through local conditions, there is a lack of consensus on how personal experience with extreme precipitation may alter public opinion on climate change. We combine high-resolution precipitation data at the zip-code level with nationally representative public opinion survey results (n = 4008) that examine beliefs in climate change and the perceived cause. Our findings support relationships between well-established value systems (i.e., partisanship, religion) and socioeconomic status with individual opinions of climate change, showing that these values are influential in opinion formation on climate issues. We also show that experiencing characteristics of atypical precipitation (e.g., more variability than normal, increasing or decreasing trends, or highly recurring extreme events) in a local area are associated with increased belief in anthropogenic climate change. This suggests that individuals in communities that experience greater atypical precipitation may be more accepting of messaging and policy strategies directly aimed at addressing climate change challenges. Thus, communication strategies that leverage individual perception of atypical precipitation at the local level may help tap into certain “experiential” processing methods, making climate change feel less distant. These strategies may help reduce polarization and motivate mitigation and adaptation actions. Significance Statement Public acceptance for anthropogenic climate change is hindered by how related issues are presented, diverse value systems, and information-processing biases. Personal experiences with extreme weather may act as a salient cue that impacts individuals’ perceptions of climate change. We couple a large, nationally representative public opinion dataset with station precipitation data at the zip-code level in the United States. Results are nuanced but suggest that anomalous and variable precipitation in a local area may be interpreted as evidence for anthropogenic climate change. So, relating atypical local precipitation conditions to climate change may help tap into individuals’ experiential processing, sidestep polarization, and tailor communications at the local level.

Farmers adapt to climate change irrespective of stated belief in climate change: a California case study

Farmers are front-line workers managing climatic change. As in many parts of the world, climate change in northern California is threatening natural resource-dependent communities by exacerbating droughts, heatwaves, and wildfires. This article draws on ethnographic methods, including 108 interviews with crop and livestock farmers and key informants, to query climate change experience, belief, and response in rural northeastern California. I find that farmers recognize and describe climate changes that match the meteorologic evidence of anthropogenic climate change, but attribute these changes to weather cycles and harsh geographies. However, irrespective of their belief in anthropogenic climate change, farmers implement climate adaptations—many of these practices with mitigation co-benefits, bolstering growing evidence that climate change belief and action are not tightly coupled. To accelerate farmer adaptation, this work suggests that policy and programming focus on actions and outcomes, rather than reshaping belief.

Attitudes towards climate migrants in Aotearoa New Zealand: the roles of climate change beliefs and immigration attitudes

As the effects of climate change begin to materialise across Pacific Island nations, many exposed communities are considering migrating away from their homelands. Migrants’ resettlement experiences can depend upon their reception in the host nation. However, it is unclear whether justice-based obligations will influence host attitudes toward climate migrants. Using an online survey of 238 Aotearoa New Zealanders, we explore how beliefs about anthropogenic climate change, climate justice and global responsibility contribute to public attitudes towards climate migrants. Overall, people thought more positively of immigrants in general than of climate migrants. Through moderated mediation analyses, we observed that people with stronger belief in anthropogenic climate change were more positive towards climate migrants. This pattern was related to people’s beliefs about climate justice and justice-based migration approaches. Findings suggest that host perceptions of climate migrants are connected to being aware of the ties between greenhouse gas emissions and migration. We outline anticipated challenges and potential opportunities for both migrant communities and the nations in which they seek refuge.

Multilevel predictors of climate change beliefs in Africa.

Although Africa is the most vulnerable region to climate change, little research has focused on how climate change is perceived by Africans. Using random forest methodology, we analyze survey and climate data from second-order political boundaries to explore what predicts climate change beliefs in Africa. We include five different dimensions of climate change beliefs: climate change awareness, belief in anthropogenic climate change, risk perception, the need to stop climate change, and self-efficacy. Based on these criteria we identify five key results: (1) climate change in Africa is largely perceived through its negative impacts on agriculture; (2) actual changes in local climate conditions are related to climate change beliefs; (3) authoritarian and intolerant ideologies are associated to less climate change awareness, and a diminished risk perception and belief that it must be stopped; (4) women are less likely to be aware of climate change, and (5) not speaking French, English or Portuguese is linked to a hindered understanding of climate beliefs. Our combined results can help policy makers better understand the need to jointly consider the multilevel complexities of individual beliefs and hydroclimatic data for the development of more accurate adaptation and mitigation strategies to combat the impacts of climate change in Africa.

The Thermostat is Rising Again: Canadian's Belief in Anthropogenic Climate Change

AbstractCanadian public opinion surveys from five Canadian polling firms in 29 separate surveys from 2007 to 2021 are used to measure changes in belief in anthropogenic climate change in Canada. By applying Stimson’s (1991) Dyad Ratio Algorithm to the surveys an index is created which shows a single trend line tracking belief in climate change over time. Belief in climate change declined from 2007 to 2011, then gradually increased to 2021. The research note concludes by suggesting there is an opportunity in Canada for action to address climate change which will continue to solve the problem even when public interest once again declines.ResuméVingt-huit sondages de l’opinion publique canadienne emmenée par cinq maisons de sondages canadiens de 2007 à 2019 sont utilisés pour mesurer le changement de la croyance au changement climatique anthropique au Canada. En appliquant l'Algorithme du rapport dyadique de Stimson (1991) aux sondages, on crée un index montrant une unique ligne de tendance suivant l'évolution de la croyance au changement climatique au fil du temps. De 2007 à 2011, la croyance au changement climatique a diminué, suivie d’une augmentation graduelle jusqu’en 2018. La conclusion de l'article de recherche suggère qu’il y a des opportunités au Canada pour agir contre le changement climatique et qu'ils continueront à résoudre le problème même si l'opinion publique s'en désintéresse.Key Words: Canada, public opinion and public policy, belief in climate changeMots-clés : Canada, opinion publique et les politiques publique, croyance dans le changement climatique

Interaction effects on support for climate‐change mitigation

AbstractBackgroundResearch on the social bases of environmental concern has established robust findings across various sociodemographic characteristics. This includes interaction effects between education and political identity, as well as particularly low concern among supporters of President Trump.ObjectivesUsing 2016 survey data, we extend such research to examine U.S. public support for four climate‐change mitigation strategies: investment in renewable energy, lifestyle changes, a revenue‐neutral carbon tax, and cap‐and‐trade.MethodsWe perform ordered logit regression of belief in anthropogenic climate change and support for these strategies on several key independent variables.ResultsSupport follows some of the patterns expected for environmental concern generally but with new details. Trump support is a dominant predictor, and education × party interactions show significant variations in levels of support.ConclusionThis provides important insights for public policy decision making related to climate change by considering which characteristics are most predictive of support for specific strategies.

Extreme weather and ratings on corporate climate mitigation policies

AbstractThis study examines whether the extreme weather events (EWEs) incurred at the headquarters of firms have an impact on their climate mitigation policies. I show that, controlling for county fixed effects, the annual number of EWEs at the headquarter counties of the largest public firms in the US significantly improves the subsequent ratings of their climate mitigation policies, with recent EWEs having a more pronounced impact. I also find that the EWEs at the neighboring counties do not have a similar effect, and provide some evidence that the impact of EWEs on climate ratings is stronger for weakly governed firms, and that some EWEs positively affect the likelihood of utility firms’ expressing a concern for climate risk through their SEC filings. These results support the idea that personal weather experiences can influence managerial belief in anthropogenic climate change which in turn affects corporate climate mitigation policies.

Environmental Efficacy, Climate Change Beliefs, Ideology, and Public Water Policy Preferences.

Water is an unpredictable and often overallocated resource in the American West, one that strains policy makers to come up with viable, and politically acceptable policies to mitigate water management concerns. While large federal reclamation projects once dominated western water management and provided ample water for large scale agricultural development as well as the urbanization of the West, water engineering alone is no longer sufficient or, in some cases, a politically acceptable policy option. As demand for water in the West increases with an ever-growing population, climate change is presenting a more challenging and potentially untenable, reality of even longer periods of drought and insufficient water quantity. The complexity of managing water resources under climate change conditions will require multifaceted and publicly acceptable strategies. This paper therefore examines water policy preferences of residents in four western states: Washington, Oregon, California, and Idaho. Using a public survey conducted in these states in 2019, we examine preferences pertaining to infrastructural, education, incentives and regulation specifically examining levels of support for varying policies based on climate change and environmental efficacy beliefs as well as geography, demographic variables, and political ideology. Results show support for all water policies surveyed, with the exception of charging higher rates for water during the hottest part of summer. The most preferred water policies pertained to tax incentives. Some variation of support exists based on gender, education, environmental values, efficacy, state residency and belief in anthropogenic climate change.

Anger consensus messaging can enhance expectations for collective action and support for climate mitigation

Media coverage of climate protests within the United States and internationally has shown growing public frustration about governmental responses to climate change. But what are the effects of conveying that people are angry? And how do they contrast with more traditional norm messages about climate policy support? Here, we investigate whether social norm messaging about collective anger can impact perceptions of consensus and public support for climate mitigation. In a pilot study and two survey experiments (total N = 1529), we find that relative to control messages, normative appeals that convey growing public anger about U.S. inaction on climate change (i.e., dynamic anger consensus messaging) can enhance Americans' consensus estimates of other Americans' climate-related beliefs and support for mitigation policy, and expectations for future climate-mitigating collective action. Moreover, exposure to a dynamic anger consensus message led to similar estimates of Americans’ policy support and belief in climate change as messages that explicitly conveyed public support for climate mitigation (Study 1) or consensus belief in anthropogenic climate change (Study 2). When tailored for a cross-partisan audience, anger consensus messaging was also effective in bolstering personal support for climate mitigation (Study 2). Notably, similar effects were observed across partisan groups. These findings suggest that, by signaling shared motivational states, emotion consensus appeals can enhance expectations for social change, with the potential to mobilize bipartisan support for climate mitigation.

The Climate Change Dilemma: How Cooperation Beliefs Influence Energy Conservation Behavior

Despite widespread belief in anthropogenic climate change and high levels of concern about its consequences, behavioral changes necessary to adequately address climate change appear difficult to achieve. This concern–behavior gap is often explained by the public goods character of climate change mitigation, which is associated with a high individual incentive to take a free ride when possible. This paper examines cooperation beliefs and their impact on individuals’ energy conservation behavior. Analyzing data from the European Social Survey, it appears that cooperation beliefs are rather low in Europe and that most people do not expect others to limit their energy use to help mitigate climate change. This low trust contrasts with individuals’ reported level of energy conservation behavior and the general high level of energy conservation in most European countries. This trust gap has important implications for pro-environmental behavior as high trust in others’ pro-environmental behavior fosters individuals’ attempts to save energy.

Who wants North Sea CCS, and why? Assessing differences in opinion between oil and gas industry respondents and wider energy and environmental stakeholders

Although Scotland and the wider UK is making good progress with research and development towards deployment of offshore carbon capture and storage, there is increasing divergence in opinion on the necessity of CCS for meeting climate change targets. Oil and gas operators appear optimistic about the technical feasibility of CCS; whereas civil society and NGOs are increasingly vocal in their scepticism towards the necessity of CCS in a net-zero society. Given that operators’ expertise may be required to support offshore CO2 storage given their subsea experience, and that civil society is important in shaping government and public opinion, this divergence may be a challenge to offshore CCS deployment in the UK and elsewhere. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the grounds on which oil and gas operators’ views on CCS differ from a wider range of stakeholders, through a survey and in-depth interviews. Our results show that people with more knowledge of CCS are more likely to support its deployment, and that strong belief in anthropogenic climate change is lower – albeit rising – among oil and gas respondents. Our results also show concern that the net-zero transition may have negative effects for carbon-intensive regions, and that storage expertise is the UK’s strongest skill set for CCS deployment. We suggest that across a range of stakeholders, the value of CCS is thus most likely to lie in specific applications (e.g. hydrogen) and/or very specific localities (e.g. places with existing subsurface knowledge and skills), rather than widespread deployment as a mitigation technology.

Changing Minds or Changing Samples? Disentangling Microlevel Stability and Macrolevel Growth in Anthropogenic Climate Change Beliefs

Over the past decade, Americans have become increasingly likely to believe that climate change is anthropogenic, or caused by human activities (e.g., Funk & Kennedy, 2019; Gallup, 2019; Leiserowitz et al., 2019). For example, recent Gallup surveys find that while just 50% of Americans expressed belief in anthropogenic climate change (ACC) in March 2010, that number had grown by 16 percentage points (to 66%) by the end of the decade (March 2019). Macro-opinion (aggregate) growth in ACC acceptance has potentially important policy consequences. People who believe that climate change is human caused tend to be more supportive of policy efforts to slow global warming, and to address its potential social, economic, and environmental consequences (Ding, Maibach, Zhao, Roser-Renouf, & Leiserowitz, 2011; Ehret, Van Boven, & Sherman, 2018; Marquart-Pyatt et al., 2011). Consequently, we might expect the public to become more receptive to climate policy action in the coming years. Although macro-opinion research has convincingly documented changing views on ACC, the individual-level microfoundations of why this is the case are substantially less clear. Some argue that increased support for ACC is the result of individual-level change in climate beliefs (Meyer, 2019; Milman, 2019; Nace, 2019). According to this view, which I call the Changing Minds Model (CMM), change in Americans’ acceptance of climate science over time, and/or personal experiences with the effects of climate change, may be increasing belief in ACC.

Climate change beliefs and support for development: Testing a cognitive hierarchy of support for natural resource-related economic development in rural Pennsylvania

Economic development in rural areas is commonly tied to the use of natural resources. These uses can be categorized as extractive (e.g. mining, natural gas, and logging) or non-extractive (e.g. real estate, tourism, outdoor recreation , and wind energy). Research has shown local support is crucial for sustainable economic development. Therefore, understanding what drives support can help researchers better understand why some projects succeed where others do not. This becomes increasingly important in the face of global climatic change. Extractive uses of natural resources in rural areas are associated with high volumes of CO2 emissions and will have to be greatly reduced if the United States is to successfully respond to climate change. In their place, non-extractive forms of natural resource development have emerged as possible alternatives in transition. Therefore, understanding the impact of climate change beliefs on support for different forms of natural resource development is beneficial for ensuring equitable plans that reflect the needs and desires of rural residents. Using a cognitive hierarchy framework, we test a model hypothesizing support for extractive or non-extractive development is influenced by climate change beliefs which are influenced by both environmental beliefs and political conservatism . We test our model on a sample of rural Pennsylvanians using structural equation modeling and find mixed support for the model. Notably, anthropocentrism and biocentrism both had positive relationships with both forms of development, refuting hypotheses. Further, belief in anthropogenic climate change had a positive relationship with extractive support, but no relationship with non-extractive support. • Cognitive models of attitudes are insufficient. • Anthropocentrism increased support for all natural resource development. • Beliefs in climate change decreased support for resource extraction. • Beliefs in climate change had no impact on non-extractive natural resource development.

Political Orientation Moderates the Relationship Between Climate Change Beliefs and Worry About Climate Change.

Public perceptions are well established as a key factor in support for climate change mitigation policies, and they tend to vary both within and between countries. Based on data from the European Social Survey Round 8 (N = 44,387), we examined the role of climate change beliefs and political orientation in explaining worry about climate change across 23 countries. We show that belief in anthropogenic climate change, followed by expectations of negative impacts from climate change, are the strongest predictors of worry about climate change. While the strength of the association between political orientation and worry about climate change varies across countries, self-positioning further to the right of the political spectrum is associated with lower levels of worry in most of the countries included in the analysis. We further show that political orientation moderates the relationship between climate change beliefs and worry. While increased confidence in the anthropogenic nature of climate change and expectations of negative impacts are both associated with increased worry across the political spectrum, the relationship is weaker among right-leaning as compared to left-leaning individuals. Notably, the main effect of political orientation on worry about climate change is no longer statistically significant when the interaction terms are present. Finally, a relatively small amount of the explained variance in worry is attributable to differences between countries. The findings might inform strategies for climate change communication in a European context.

Psychological and experiential factors affecting climate change perception: learnings from a transnational empirical study and implications for framing climate-related flood events

Understanding the underlying values, beliefs and emotions that influence the public’s perceptions and opinions on climate change (CC) is increasingly important, as CC is a complex and politicized phenomenon. Additionally, optimizing messaging for communicating CC and encouraging greater mitigation behavior can yield significant benefits to global stakeholders. Here we evaluated the effectiveness of informative, persuasive and empathic message frames about a major climate-related local flooding event through online surveys administered to 370 adults in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Canada and 360 adults in Queensland, Australia. Measures of trust in climate communicators and climate science, concern over CC effects, and belief that most recent floods are due to CC were assessed before and after message exposure, along with related values, beliefs and emotions. Willingness to support pro-environmental groups was assessed as a proxy measure of behavioural intent. Cumulative odds ordinal regression and multinomial regression were used to predict group membership (no support, passive support, active support). Political affiliation, trust and belief in CC, belief in anthropogenic CC, pro-environmental values, and, in some regressions, previous flood exposure, were significant predictors of activism support. Respondents who received the empathic message frame and had low to medium pro-environmental values were more likely to believe the link between flooding and CC compared to those who received the informative message frame. These results, including the finding that some elicited emotions predicted behavioral intent, provide insight into how to construct climate information for groups with varying beliefs, values and experiences, to reduce climate skepticism and encourage pro-environmental behavior.

Beyond Spiritual Focus: Climate Change Awareness, Role Perception, and Action among Church Leaders in Nigeria

AbstractThis study explored the role of church leaders in addressing climate change with a focus on Catholic, Anglican, and Pentecostal churches in Nigeria. The study adopted a semistructured face-to-face interview with 30 church leaders drawn from the selected denominations (i.e., 10 church leaders from each denomination). These participants were spread across five states in five geopolitical zones in Nigeria. A descriptive narrative approach was employed in the thematic organization and analysis of data. Findings showed that while all the participants across the three denominations—Catholic, Anglican, and Pentecostal churches—agreed to have heard of climate change, their perceptions of the causes of the phenomenon were narrow and varied along religious denominational lines. More Catholic participants expressed belief in anthropogenic climate change than did Anglicans and Pentecostals. Awareness creation, charity for disaster victims, and prayer were identified by the participants as the roles churches can play in addressing climate change. Although climate change action was generally poor among participants, Catholics engaged more in organizational action than did Anglicans and Pentecostals. In contrast, climate change actions were more on a personal level than on the organizational/church level within Pentecostal churches. The implications of the findings for the Church/church leaders, policy, and future research are discussed.