The moderating role of political affiliation in the link between flooding experience and preparedness to reduce energy use

Abstract

Research suggests that highlighting links between local weather events and climate change can help promote climate change engagement. Yet, the evidence for the relationship between weather experiences and climate change attitudes has been mixed. Here we argue that obtaining an accurate assessment of the contribution of weather experiences to climate change engagement necessitates explicit evaluation of factors such as values and identities that influence the way weather experiences are interpreted and integrated into climate change attitudes. We re-analysed data from a prior study in which reported flood experience was found to be indirectly linked to preparedness to reduce energy use among UK residents. Overall, flood experience was positively linked with perceived vulnerability and negatively linked with uncertainty about climate change, but the purported indirect relationship between flood experience and preparedness to reduce energy use was observed among left and not right-leaning voters. We concluded that assessing interactions between extreme weather experiences and political affiliation lends valuable nuance to evaluation of the effects of such experiences on climate change perceptions and attitudes. Highlighting links between climate change and flooding may have varying levels of influence on climate change engagement depending on individuals' political affiliation.

Attribution matters: Revisiting the link between extreme weather experience and climate change mitigation responses

“…This study also reiterates evidence of a link between political affiliation and climate change perceptions insofar that right-leaning voting intention was shown to negatively predict attribution of the 2013/2014 UK flooding to climate change. This finding is consistent with previous suggestions by Ogunbode et al (2017) that flooding perceptions and associated responses to climate change in the UK covary systematically with individuals' political affiliation. Affiliation with the right-leaning Conservative Party has previously been linked with climate change scepticism (Whitmarsh, 2011), and political group identity can be expected to influence whether individuals perceive relevant events to be unusual, unnatural and a reason to worry or act (Hahnel and Brosch, 2016;Shao and Goidel, 2016).…”

“…Right-leaning voters were the focus in the current analyses (with the reference category being 'other' voters) because they may be more likely to conform with the norms of their political in-group (Panagopoulos and van der Linden, 2016). This focus also derives from a desire to further explore reasons why flooding experiences may have a weaker link with climate change mitigation responses among right-leaning UK voters (see Ogunbode et al, 2017).…”

“…Greater levels of climate change scepticism have also been linked with right-leaning political affiliation Whitmarsh, 2011). This plausibly explains why extreme weather experience (specifically flooding experience) has been shown to be a weaker predictor of willingness to engage in climate change mitigation behaviour among right-leaning UK voters compared with their left-leaning counterparts (Ogunbode et al, 2017).…”

Challenges to implementing bottom-up flood risk decision analysis frameworks: how strong are social networks of flooding professionals?

“…Practitioners disagreed on the community desire to incorporate climate adaptation practices into flood mitigation planning, which may reflect the politically contentious nature of climate change in US political discourse and policymaking more generally. Previous research has demonstrated disconnections between public climate-flood risk perceptions and expert opinion (e.g., Hamilton et al, 2016;Ogunbode et al, 2017;Shepard et al, 2018). In this case study, professionals disagreed on both community perceptions (Table 4) and climate education (Table 5).…”

“…A conceptual disconnect on the definition of flooding points to issues with the core problem statement that coalitions of flooding professionals are self-organized to solve. While formal guidelines exist at the US national level (Obama, 2015), these definitions often conflate risk and hazard. Formal federal definitions in the USA commonly focus on hydrologic hazard posed by a static water surface elevation, as in FEMA flood insurance rate maps (FEMA, 2018), neglecting hazard associated with discharge velocity, duration of inundation, and suspended material.…”