On the Divergent American Reactions to Terrorism and Climate Change

Abstract

Abstract

The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change

“…Most members of the public, according to the bounded rationality theory, employ System 1 reasoning most of the time. Although System 1 works well for most of the contingencies in daily life, citizens' predominant reliance on heuristic rather than more analytic modes of reasoning leads them to underestimate climate change risks, which are remote and abstract compared to a host of emotionally charged risks such as those associated with nuclear power or terrorism that the public in fact tends to overestimate (Weber 2006;Sunstein 2007).…”

Explaining topic prevalence in answers to open-ended survey questions about climate change

“…From this perspective, the present study permits us to uncover some of the fundamental constraints on and opportunities of climate action. Specifically, the degree to which citizens cast climate change as personal and immediate rather than distant may influence the extent to which policymakers perceive support for controversial mitigation and adaptation measures 18 .…”

Environmental attitudes in the aftermath of the Gulf Oil Spill

“…The likelihood estimates assigned to outcomes such as the Gulf Oil Spill are also understood to be subject to an availability heuristic, according to which these estimates increase when the outcome is more vivid, frequent, and recent (Sunstein, 2007). Lack of concern about climate change is often attributed to the workings of this availability heuristic since the impacts associated with long term climatic changes and other "diffuse" environmental problems (such as those measured by the NEP scale) may not be significant enough to impact overall environmental worldviews (Arcury and Christianson, 1990).…”

“…Arcury and Christiansen, 1990) or events unrelated to environmental issues such as 9/11 (e.g. Sunstein, 2007;Lee and Cameron, 2008). Our study is distinct from each of these in so far as we examine a general measure of environmental concern elicited before and after a man-made environmental disaster.…”

“…Indeed, very few studies have tested for opinion change through the elicitation of attitudes both before and after a disaster event, which can be attributed to the unpredictable nature of these events. Exceptions to this include Sunstein (2007) and Lee and Cameron (2008), who both used preand post-event attitudinal measures to reveal a decline in public opinion surrounding environmental issues and support for climate change, respectively, following the events of 9/11. Smith (2002) used regression analysis to examine public support for nuclear power over the period from 1973 to 1990 and found that the Three Mile Island nuclear incident resulted in a permanent 12 percent loss in support for nuclear power among California residents.…”