The Psychological Distance of Climate Change

Abstract

A note on versions:The version presented here may differ from the published version or from the version of record. If you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher's version. Please see the repository url above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription.For more information, please contact eprints@nottingham.ac.uk 1 Author Posting. © The Authors 2012. This is the author's version of the work. For full bibliographic citation, please refer to Risk Analysis,32,6,[957][958][959][960][961][962][963][964][965][966][967][968][969][970][971][972]

Intentions to make sustainable tourism choices: do value orientations, time perspective, and efficacy beliefs explain individual differences?

“…It seems plausible that temporal framing might help encourage environmentally sustainable travel choices among tourists who are less prone to considering the long-term consequences of their present behaviours. This view is also in line with findings from Spence et al (2012), who investigated public perceptions of climate change. They found that global climate change is largely perceived as a temporally (and geographically) distant threat, and that reduced perceived temporal (and geographic) distance is associated with a stronger preparedness to reduce energy use in response to climate concerns.…”

“…Research shows that environmental problems are often perceived as remote rather than as immediate threats (e.g. Gifford et al, 2009;Spence, Poortinga, & Pidgeon, 2012), which could be the reason behind why the strength of stated behavioural intentions was more sensitive to individual differences in CFC-Future than in CFC-Immediate.…”

Carbon reduction scenarios for 2050: An explorative analysis of public preferences

“…The implementation of low carbon technology changes (such as the proposed shift towards low emission vehicles) and societal change towards lower carbon behaviours (such as the increased use of public transport and car-sharing) will only be realised if they are socially acceptable (Christmas et al, 2009), yet research to understand the likelihood of extensive behaviour change towards low carbon demand-side policy options is still in its infancy (Darnton, 2008). Given the scale of societal change that is predicted to be required to reduce emissions, an understanding of public preferences for different low carbon energy and transport policies is essential (Spence et al, 2012). More recent work is indicating that increased public participation is crucial as public preferences are potentially based on complex, and far from transparent, sets of underlying values (Parkhill et al, 2013).…”

Clean up your own mess: An experimental study of moral responsibility and efficiency

“…While we are able to identify the importance of such motives in our experiment, it remains to be investigated how strong these motives are in the real world. For instance, in our experiment, the chickpeas are visible and have a direct effect on the number of sliders that can be placed, whereas many environmental externalities, such as greenhouse gas emissions, have effects that occur in the far future and are subject to some degree of uncertainty, hence making them 'psychologically distant' (Spence et al 2012). We did, however, find evidence of a link between the choices in our experiment and the participants' attitudes regarding how to fight climate change, as elicited by the postexperimental questionnaire.…”