The role of economic perceptions in influencing views on climate change: an experimental analysis with British respondents
The role of economic perceptions in influencing views on climate change: an experimental analysis with British respondents
Existing analysis suggests that individuals may reduce their concern for and belief in climate change as a result of macro-economic difficulties. Such conclusions are predominantly based on repeated cross-sectional and pooled data making it difficult to separate out the effects of economic conditions from other explanatory factors. Approaching this question through experimentally priming individuals to feel a certain way about the economy has also proven difficult due to economic perceptions being difficult to alter in a survey setting [Kachi, Bernauer, & Gampfer, 2015. Climate policy in hard times: Are the pessimists right? Ecological Economics, 114, 227–241]. This article thus investigates a related question on the effect of the salience of economic perceptions on climate change views using an online question-order experiment, whereby salience denotes the prominence of the issue in the mind of the respondent. Respondents were randomly assigned to receiving an economic prompting question before or after being asked about their climate change views. The results show no effect of the prompting on belief in anthropogenic climate change, but they do show an effect of prompting on prioritization of taking urgent action to address climate change. Those with a non-positive view of the economy were less likely to support urgent action in comparison to those who considered the economy to be performing well if they were asked first about their economic evaluations. The salience of economic evaluations and the direction of such evaluations would not be significant if economic evaluations themselves were not important, and thus the findings also reveal that economic evaluations do matter.
Britain, Climate Change, economic perceptions, Survey experiments
581-592
Kenny, John
db32975a-c617-4d10-9564-b94c32942f3d
2018
Kenny, John
db32975a-c617-4d10-9564-b94c32942f3d
Kenny, John
(2018)
The role of economic perceptions in influencing views on climate change: an experimental analysis with British respondents.
Climate Policy, 18 (5), .
(doi:10.1080/14693062.2017.1414026).
Abstract
Existing analysis suggests that individuals may reduce their concern for and belief in climate change as a result of macro-economic difficulties. Such conclusions are predominantly based on repeated cross-sectional and pooled data making it difficult to separate out the effects of economic conditions from other explanatory factors. Approaching this question through experimentally priming individuals to feel a certain way about the economy has also proven difficult due to economic perceptions being difficult to alter in a survey setting [Kachi, Bernauer, & Gampfer, 2015. Climate policy in hard times: Are the pessimists right? Ecological Economics, 114, 227–241]. This article thus investigates a related question on the effect of the salience of economic perceptions on climate change views using an online question-order experiment, whereby salience denotes the prominence of the issue in the mind of the respondent. Respondents were randomly assigned to receiving an economic prompting question before or after being asked about their climate change views. The results show no effect of the prompting on belief in anthropogenic climate change, but they do show an effect of prompting on prioritization of taking urgent action to address climate change. Those with a non-positive view of the economy were less likely to support urgent action in comparison to those who considered the economy to be performing well if they were asked first about their economic evaluations. The salience of economic evaluations and the direction of such evaluations would not be significant if economic evaluations themselves were not important, and thus the findings also reveal that economic evaluations do matter.
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Accepted/In Press date: 3 December 2017
e-pub ahead of print date: 18 December 2017
Published date: 2018
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ePrints team: John is a new starter
Keywords:
Britain, Climate Change, economic perceptions, Survey experiments
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 434959
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/434959
ISSN: 1469-3062
PURE UUID: 5c093541-71e1-4a41-a166-a3debcf8ae2b
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Date deposited: 17 Oct 2019 16:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 04:42
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John Kenny
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