How will climate change shape climate opinion?

Abstract

As climate change intensifies, global publics will experience more unusual weather and extreme weather events. How will individual experiences with these weather trends shape climate change beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors? In this article, we review 73 papers that have studied the relationship between climate change experiences and public opinion. Overall, we find mixed evidence that weather shapes climate opinions. Although there is some support for a weak effect of local temperature and extreme weather events on climate opinion, the heterogeneity of independent variables, dependent variables, study populations, and research designs complicate systematic comparison. To advance research on this critical topic, we suggest that future studies pay careful attention to differences between self-reported and objective weather data, causal identification, and the presence of spatial autocorrelation in weather and climate data. Refining research designs and methods in future studies will help us understand the discrepancies in results, and allow better detection of effects, which have important practical implications for climate communication. As the global population increasingly experiences weather conditions outside the range of historical experience, researchers, communicators, and policymakers need to understand how these experiences shape-and are shaped by-public opinions and behaviors.

Wildfire Exposure Increases Pro-Environment Voting within Democratic but Not Republican Areas

“…Moreover, this effect is highly heterogeneous depending on partisan identity: it is concentrated in the block groups that are most Democratic, while areas dominated by Republican voters show no detectable effect of wildfire. These findings are consistent with some survey-based work on wildfire exposure in emphasizing heterogeneity in public responsiveness as a function of priors about climate change (Lacroix, Gifford, and Rush 2019;Marlon et al 2020); however, other observational research has found mixed relationships between individual climate experiences and climaterelated beliefs and behaviors (Dessai and Sims 2010;Howe et al 2019;Kreibich 2011). For example, Javeline, Kijewski-Correa, and Chesler (2019) find that both risk exposure and adaptation intentions related to sea-level rise are independent of climate change attitudes.…”

“…These mixed empirical findings reflect systematic differences in how climate threats and responses are measured and in approaches to causal identification (Howe et al 2019). They also reflect different theoretical expectations about political responsiveness to experienced threat.…”

“…Our study offers two major advances over prior work. First, existing research on experienced climate change has exclusively used survey outcomes to measure individual attitudes or behavioral intentions (Howe et al 2019). By contrast, we estimate the effect of an actual climate-related hazard (wildfires) on a realized political behavior that directly influences policy (ballot initiative support).…”

The nature, significance, and influence of perceived personal experience of climate change

“…While the authors’ 2014 review identified few relevant articles, this current, broader, review identified and considered 36 articles of comparable relevance. In the context of their own research, other authors have also reviewed research findings addressing the nature, extent, and influence of ‘personal experience of climate change’ (e.g., Borick & Rabe, 2017; Hornsey et al, 2016; Howe et al, 2019; McDonald et al, 2015; Nielsen & D’haen, 2014; Ogunbode, Demski, et al, 2019; van der Linden, 2014; Weber, 2010). A paradigmatic example of issues addressed in these reviews has been that of ‘seeing’ versus ‘believing’ in explaining research findings relating to the nature and role of personal experience of climate change (e.g., Lujala & Lein, 2020; Myers et al, 2013; Reser et al, 2014).…”

Warmer climate projections in EC-Earth3-Veg: the role of changes in the greenhouse gas concentrations from CMIP5 to CMIP6

“…Consequently, already planned measures for climate change adaptation may not be sufficient and there might be a need to strengthen existing emissions reductions targets. Communication-wise, a sharpening of the message around potential future change may reduce public trust in the science if uncertainties are not framed in an adequate way (Howe et al 2019). Such a framing must rely on the understanding and communication of the reasons behind the differences between CMIP5 and CMIP6 results, thereby promoting trustworthy climate services building on actionable climate data and knowledge (Bowyer et al 2015).…”