Consequence evaluations and moral concerns about climate change: insights from nationally representative surveys across four European countries

Doran, Rouven; Böhm, Gisela; Pfister, Hans‐Rüdiger; Steentjes, Katharine; Pidgeon, Nicholas Frank

doi:10.1080/13669877.2018.1473468

Cited by 26 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Measuring political orientation on a left-right continuum in an international context, Kvaløy et al (2012) as well as McCright et al (2015) found that left-leaning individuals are more likely to perceive climate change as a serious problem. Doran et al (2018) found that political orientation predicted support for climate policies, even when controlling for consequence beliefs and moral concerns about climate change. And Poortinga et al (2019) found a clear and highly consistent negative association between right-leaning political orientation and climate change concern using the same data as used in this paper.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Political Orientation Moderates the Relationship Between Climate Change Beliefs and Worry About Climate Change

et al. 2020

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Public perceptions are well established as a key factor in support for climate change mitigation policies, and they tend to vary both within and between countries. Based on data from the European Social Survey Round 8 (N = 44,387), we examined the role of climate change beliefs and political orientation in explaining worry about climate change across 23 countries. We show that belief in anthropogenic climate change, followed by expectations of negative impacts from climate change, are the strongest predictors of worry about climate change. While the strength of the association between political orientation and worry about climate change varies across countries, self-positioning further to the right of the political spectrum is associated with lower levels of worry in most of the countries included in the analysis. We further show that political orientation moderates the relationship between climate change beliefs and worry. While increased confidence in the anthropogenic nature of climate change and expectations of negative impacts are both associated with increased worry across the political spectrum, the relationship is weaker among right-leaning as compared to left-leaning individuals. Notably, the main effect of political orientation on worry about climate change is no longer statistically significant when the interaction terms are present. Finally, a relatively small amount of the explained variance in worry is attributable to differences between countries. The findings might inform strategies for climate change communication in a European context.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Political Orientation Moderates the Relationship Between Climate Change Beliefs and Worry About Climate Change

et al. 2020

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“…Previous research has shown that personal norms can be powerful determinants of proenvironmental behavior (Bamberg & Möser, 2007;Yazdanpanah & Forouzani, 2015;Farrow et al, 2017). For example, Doran et al (2019) showed that personal norms (moral concerns) are a stronger predictor of policy support to mitigate climate change than consequence evaluations. Huber et al (2020) examined 5 years of longitudinal US household data and found that that personal norms are strongly related to recycling behavior.…”

Section: Personal Normsmentioning

confidence: 99%

All by myself? Testing descriptive social norm-nudges to increase flood preparedness among homeowners

Mol

Botzen

Blasch

et al. 2021

Behav. Public Policy

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Nudges based on social norms (norm-nudges) can be compelling behavioral interventions compared with traditional interventions such as taxes and regulations, but they do not work in all circumstances. We tested two empirical norm-nudge frames in an online experiment on taking measures for flood preparedness with large samples of homeowners (N = 1805) in two European countries, to evaluate the possible interactions between norm-nudge effectiveness, individual characteristics, and intercultural differences. We contrasted these norm-nudge treatments with a control and norm-focusing treatment by asking respondents to express their beliefs about what other respondents would do before making a decision relevant to their own payoff. We find no evidence of a treatment effect, suggesting that our social norm-nudges do not affect flood preparedness in the context of a flood risk investment game.

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“…Figge, Young, and Barkemeyer 2014). Policy measures that require more commitment and effort from citizens, for example increased taxation and limitations of private motoring in certain urban areas, are typically less favoured compared to measures that take place rather unnoticed, such as technical cost-effectiveness improvements (Drews and van der Bergh 2016;Hagen, Middal, and Pijawka 2016;Rhodes, Axsen, and Jaccard 2017;Doran et al 2019).…”

Section: Theoretical Background 21 Public Climate Perceptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of national affluence, carbon emissions, and democracy in Europeans’ climate perceptions

Pohjolainen

Kukkonen

Jokinen

et al. 2021

Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research

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There are differences across Europe in elements of climate citizenship, including climate concern, perceived responsibility, and willingness to support and take climate action. This paper examines how individual-level climate perceptions correspond to a country's contribution to climate change and its ability to develop climate policies. Data from the European Social Survey Round 8 (23 European countries, n = 44,387) was used to explore how national-level factors (affluence as per capita GDP, carbon emissions as per capita CO2 emissions, and democracy as electoral democracy index) are related to individual-level climate perceptions (climate concern, perceived climate responsibility, climate policy support, and personal climate action). The analysis shows that the studied individual-level perceptions are all linked, and that perceived climate responsibility is a factor that helps in understanding how individual-level climate views are connected. Further, national-level affluence and democracy are connected to stronger individual-level perceptions both directly and through mediating their connections. Our results suggest that achieving ambitious climate policy targets in Europe could benefit from focusing on the role of perceived climate responsibility in boosting policy support and action. Moreover, the connection between national-level (democratic and economic) factors and public climate perceptions emphasises the need to place climate policies in a wider context.

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Consequence evaluations and moral concerns about climate change: insights from nationally representative surveys across four European countries

Cited by 26 publications

References 45 publications

Political Orientation Moderates the Relationship Between Climate Change Beliefs and Worry About Climate Change

Political Orientation Moderates the Relationship Between Climate Change Beliefs and Worry About Climate Change

All by myself? Testing descriptive social norm-nudges to increase flood preparedness among homeowners

The role of national affluence, carbon emissions, and democracy in Europeans’ climate perceptions

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