The influence of socio-demographic factors on attitudes towards climate change among the inhabitants of European countries: cross-country analysis

Abstract

The increased interest in the topic of climate change (IC) on the part of the general public can be demonstrated by the fact that the number of search queries on Google with the topic "climate change" has doubled over the past five years. All this creates a field for the study of public opinion on the problem of IC. However, at the moment, there is a gap in the Russian literature in the study of this topic from the point of view of the social sciences; most of the works are devoted to the causes and consequences of this phenomenon from the standpoint of natural sciences and economics. The study aims to identify the differences in the nature of the impact between the "usual" socio-demographic characteristics and other characteristics of the inhabitants of European countries on attitudes towards climate change. The aim of the study is to assess the ability of "familiar" socio-demographic characteristics in comparison with "unusual" characteristics to explain attitudes towards climate change and to differentiate countries by the nature of the impact of these characteristics. The scientific significance of this work is to determine the place of "habitual" socio-demographic characteristics in the study of attitudes towards climate change. From an applied point of view, the nature of the influence of "familiar" socio-demographic characteristics is important when targeting a certain group of people (most often it is determined by such characteristics) in the framework of environmental measures.