Lower Carbon, Stronger Nation: Exploring Sociopolitical Determinants for the Chinese Public’s Climate Attitudes

Abstract

Although numerous studies have examined the Chinese public’s attitudes towards climate change, few have shed light on how sociopolitical factors related to the policy and the state have shaped such attitudes. This constituted our research goal. Against the background of China’s Dual Carbon Goals, a national survey (n = 1469) was conducted to investigate the relationships between climate attitudes and climate benefit perception, institutional trust, policy familiarity, nationalism, and environmental values. Findings showed that respondents shared a high score of nationalism and a high level of trust in Chinese institutions. Their national benefit perception of climate action, nationalism, and trust in national institutions were strong determinants of their attitudes towards climate change. The findings suggested that for many Chinese, a lower-carbon future will be accompanied by a coming stronger nation, which is a key driver for people to adopt positive attitudes towards addressing climate change. As such, the current study revealed an alternative landscape of the determinants underlying people’s attitudes towards climate change. To our knowledge, this is the first scholarly effort in China to empirically demonstrate the predictive role of nationalistic value in shaping climate attitudes and is one of the earliest efforts in climate communication to test the impact of the policy on such attitudes.

National threat speaks louder for words than for actions: Examining Chinese public’s multi-level climate risk perceptions and their attitudes/behaviors

“…As mentioned above, Pan et al (2022b) found that nationalism robustly predicted people's attitudes toward climate change. Nationalism measures individuals' loyalty to their state (Tang & Darr, 2012).…”

“…Although national interest (or nationalism) resulted in different persuasion effects in the two studies, they similarly revealed that 'nation' as a predictor may function differently from other impersonal aspects in risk communication settings. Together with Xie et al's (2003) nding that Chinese people perceived the threat to the national interest as a major risk and the recent research highlighting the importance of nationalism in in uencing Chinese attitudes toward climate change (Pan et al, 2022b), it seems legitimate to distinguish national risk from average societal risks in the Chinese context. In this study, perceived national risk speci cally tests people's feelings about the risk that climate change may bring to China, and societal risks examine people's feelings of climate risks falling upon their neighbors, employers, and their regions (provinces).…”

“…As risk and bene t perceptions often jointly determine people's views on climate change (Lorenzoni & Pidgeon, 2006;Tobler et al, 2012), we should expect that the Chinese public's perceived bene ts of addressing climate change may also in uence their climate attitudes. In China, people generally think that addressing climate change can bring signi cant bene ts (Wang & Zhou, 2020) and a chance for national development (Pan et al, 2022b). While we explore the impact of different levels of climate risk perceptions on the Chinese public's attitudes toward climate change, the perceived bene t should also function differently at personal, societal, and national levels.…”

Policy Endorsement and Booster Shot: Exploring Politicized Determinants for Acceptance of a Third Dose of COVID-19 Vaccine in China

“…We selected six questions( Table 7 ) based on an established measure to examine nationalism [ 43 ]. Previous studies have repeatedly adopted the measure [ 13 , 44 ]. Those questions had good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.83).…”