Public attitudes towards climate change: A cross-country analysis
| Author | Defne Günay,Gizem Arıkan |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148120951013 |
| Published date | 01 February 2021 |
| Date | 01 February 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148120951013
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2021, Vol. 23(1) 158 –174
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148120951013
journals.sagepub.com/home/bpi
Public attitudes towards
climate change: A cross-
country analysis
Gizem Arıkan1 and Defne Günay2*
Abstract
Addressing climate change requires international effort from both governments and the public.
Climate change concern is a crucial variable influencing public support for measures to address
climate change. Combining country-level data with data from the Pew Research Center Spring
2015 Global Attitudes Survey, we test whether perceived threats from climate change influence
climate change concern. We distinguish between personal threat and planetary threat and we
find that both threats have substantive effects on climate change concern, with personal threat
exerting a greater influence on climate change concern than planetary threat. The effects of both
types of threats are also moderated by Gross Domestic Product per capita, such that threats have
stronger effects on climate change concern in high-income countries than in low-income countries.
Our findings contribute to the existing literature and open up new debates concerning the role
of threats in climate change concern and have implications for climate change communication.
Keywords
climate change concern, climate change threats, comparative analysis, multi-level modelling,
public opinion
Introduction
Climate change is one of the most pressing international issues, which requires intense
efforts from governments to tackle it. In addition to the implementation of government
policies, the public has to make lifestyle changes to mitigate and adapt to climate
change. Both of these changes require that the public sees climate change as a serious
issue and makes it a priority for action (Konisky et al., 2016). In fact, many studies
show that climate change concern influences support for climate policies as well as
individual willingness to make lifestyle changes to address climate change (Leiserowitz,
2005).
1Department of Political Science, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
2Department of International Relations, Yaşar University, Izmir, Turkey
*Authors are listed in alphabetical order.
Corresponding author:
Defne Günay, Department of International Relations, Yaşar University, Universite caddesi, Agacli Yol, No:37-
39, 35100 Izmir, Turkey.
Email: defne.gunay@yasar.edu.tr
951013BPI0010.1177/1369148120951013The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsArıkan and Günay
research-article2020
Original Article
Arıkan and Günay 159
Various studies have looked at the factors shaping public concern with climate change
at individual and national levels (e.g. Kvaløy et al., 2012; Sandvik, 2008). In this article,
we combine country-level data with data from the Pew Research Center Spring 2015
Global Attitudes Survey, which includes public opinion data from a wide range of coun-
tries to test whether perceived threats from climate change influence climate change con-
cern. Some researchers have argued that highlighting the threats climate change poses
may be helpful to bring climate change to the political agenda (Von Lucke et al., 2014).
However, the effects of perceived threats from climate change on climate change concern
have not been examined so far using cross-national data. Our study also distinguishes
between two levels at which threats are perceived (cf. Stevens and Vaughan-Williams,
2016): personal threat to one’s self and immediate environment and planetary threat
against the planet and humans as a result of climate change. We find that both types of
threat have substantive effects on climate change concern, and that the effect of personal
threat is stronger than the effect of planetary threat. We also find that the effect of plane-
tary and personal threats on climate change concern is higher in high-income countries
compared to low-income countries.
Our findings make several contributions to the literature. First, we show that perceived
threats from climate change have positive effects on climate change concern. Second,
some researchers pointed out that climate change is perceived usually as a threat to distant
people and places than to one’s self here and now (Schultz et al., 2014; Tvinnereim et al.,
2020). Our findings demonstrate that when climate change is perceived as a threat to the
self and the immediate family, it has stronger effects on climate change concern. Therefore,
if most people continue to perceive climate change as primarily threatening the planet and
the humans, the effect of threat on concern could be relatively limited. Third, the finding
that the effects of perceived threats from climate change are stronger in high-income
countries has implications for climate change communication. Researchers discuss
whether highlighting the various threats climate change poses is an effective way to com-
municate climate change (see Hulme, 2008; Risbey, 2008; Spence and Pidgeon, 2010).
Our findings indicate that this may indeed be a strategy to increase climate change con-
cern particularly in high-income countries.
Climate change concern and the role of threats
Climate change concern has a robust influence on support for climate-related policies
(Leiserowitz, 2006: 45; Maibach et al., 2011). Both survey and experimental evidence
show that climate change concern is associated with higher levels of support for national
policies to address climate change such as increasing taxes on industries that contribute
to climate change (Hart, 2011; Mayer et al., 2017) as well as individual willingness to
engage in environment-friendly behaviours that reduce greenhouse gas emissions such as
using less air conditioning in the summer or turning down the thermostat in the winter
(Hart, 2011; also see Smith and Mayer, 2018).
Climate change concern is influenced by a variety of psychological, social, and back-
ground factors (Slovic, 2000). However, to date, the effect of threat on climate change
concern have not been analysed using large-scale cross-national data. We also distinguish
between different types of threats that individuals perceive from climate change at differ-
ent levels (Stevens & Vaughan-Williams, 2016). In discussing threat perceptions and their
effects on attitudes, the political psychology literature often distinguishes between differ-
ent types or levels of threats. For example, personal and national or collective threats are
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