Country-level conditions like prosperity, democracy, and regulatory culture predict individual climate change belief

Abstract

Decades after the scientific community agreed on the existence of human-made climate change, substantial parts of the world’s population remain unaware or unconvinced that human activity is responsible for climate change. Belief in human-made climate change continues to vary strongly within and across different countries. Here I analyse data collected by the Gallop World Poll between 2007 and 2010 on individual attitudes across 143 countries, using a random forest model, to show that country-level conditions like environmental protection, civil liberty, and economic development are highly predictive of individual climate change belief. Individual education and internet access, in contrast, are correlated to climate change awareness, but much less to belief in climate change’s anthropogenic causes. I also identify non-linear pattern in which country-level circumstances relate to individual climate change belief. The local importance of most predictors varies strongly across countries, indicating that each country has its relatively unique set of correlates of climate change belief.

Democracy and Public Opinion Formation: How Illiberal Regimes Suppress Climate Change Concern

“…Although our paper is the first study that establishes a causal link between democracy and climate change concern, it is consistent with studies by Knight (2016) who observes climate change concern to be higher in politically left-leaning democracies and by Levi (2021) who finds democracy to predict individual climate change belief. It also mirrors the findings by Kountouris (2021) who shows that the exposure to the political system of the Eastern German GDR has negatively affected climate change concern among its former citizens even long after the German reunification.…”

Multilevel predictors of climate change beliefs in Africa

“…In this line, in-depth case study evidence suggests that even when climate change information is available, a less educated public may lack the tools to understand it, inducing incorrect beliefs [ 16 ]. This is further corroborated by large -N studies that find a statistical relationship between higher levels of education and more accurate climate change beliefs [ 8 , 10 , 11 , 17 , 18 ].…”

“…Recent metanalyses suggest that fewer than 5% of published articles included African countries in their sample [ 4 , 8 ]. As CCBs and its predictors vary widely across regions [ 10 , 11 ], the applicability of non-African research is, at least, questionable. This study aims to narrow this gap.…”

“…A first argument suggests that individuals do not form correct beliefs about climate change because they face barriers to access climate information. For instance, not having a cellphone or access to the internet are barriers that limit knowledge transference about climate change, reducing the amount of information that can improve CCBs [ 10 , 11 ]. A similar argument suggests that such technological barriers limit access to social media platforms, which can also provide knowledge about climate change-related debates among the public [ 14 ].…”

“…A final argument postulates that individuals have more urgent daily concerns (e.g., “bread and butter” issues), which relegate climate science information and its possible consequences to the backburner [ 10 , 11 , 41 – 43 ]. In other words, CCBs are deemed less important than immediate day-to-day concerns.…”