Abstract
The impacts of climate change on human cultures have received increasing attention in recent years. However, the extent to which people are aware of these impacts, whether such awareness motivates climate action, and what kinds of people show stronger awareness are rarely understood. The present investigation provides the very first set of answers to these questions. In two studies (with a student sample with N = 199 from Singapore and a demographically representative sample with N = 625 from the USA), we observed a generally high level of awareness among our participants. Most importantly, perceived cultural impacts of climate change robustly predicted intentions to engage in climate change mitigation behavior and climate activism, as well as support for climate policy. We also found expected associations between perceived cultural impacts and some psychological and demographic variables (e.g., cosmopolitan orientation, moral inclusion, political orientation). These findings not only add a cultural dimension to the research on public understanding of climate change but also reveal a viable application of cultural frames as an effective climate communication strategy.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. All measures used in the studies reported are available in the supplementary documents.
Code availability
Not applicable.
References
Adger WN, Barnett J, Brown K, Marshall N, Obrien K (2013) Cultural dimensions of climate change impacts and adaptation. Nat Clim Chang 3(2):112–117. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1666
Anderson DG, Bissett TG, Yerka SJ, Wells JJ, Kansa EC, Kansa SW, ..., White DA (2017) Sea-level rise and archaeological site destruction: an example from the southeastern United States using DINAA (Digital Index of North American Archaeology). PLoS ONE 12(11):e0188142. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0188142
Bain PG, Milfont TL, Kashima Y, Bilewicz M, Doron G, Garðarsdóttir RB, ..., Corral-Verdugo V (2016) Co-benefits of addressing climate change can motivate action around the world. Nat Clim Chang 6(2):154–157. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2814
Bizumic B, Duckitt J (2012) What is and is not ethnocentrism? A conceptual analysis and political implications. Polit Psychol 33(6):887–909. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2012.00907.x
Braun V, Clarke V (2006) Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qual Res Psychol 3(2):77–101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa
Cruz SM (2017) The relationships of political ideology and party affiliation with environmental concern: a meta-analysis. J Environ Psychol 53:81–91. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2017.06.010
DeBono R, Vincenti K, Calleja N (2012) Risk communication: climate change as a human-health threat, a survey of public perceptions in Malta. Eur J Pub Health 22(1):144–149. https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckq181
DeVellis R (2003) Scale development: Theory and applications. Sage, Thousand Oaks
Dijkstra A (2008) The psychology of tailoring-ingredients in computer-tailored persuasion. Soc Pers Psychol Compass 2(2):765–784. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2008.00081.x
Doyle J (2007) Picturing the clima(c)tic: greenpeace and the representational politics of climate change communication. Sci Cult 16:129–150. https://doi.org/10.1080/09505430701368938
Fatorić S, Seekamp E (2017) Are cultural heritage and resources threatened by climate change? A Systematic Literature Review. Clim Chang 142(1–2):227–254. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-017-1929-9
Franzen A, Vogl D (2013) Two decades of measuring environmental attitudes: a comparative analysis of 33 countries. Glob Environ Chang 23(5):1001–1008. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2013.03.009
Haque MA, Yamamoto SS, Malik AA, Sauerborn R (2012) Households’ perception of climate change and human health risks: a community perspective. Environ Health 11(1):1–12. https://doi.org/10.1186/1476-069X-11-1
Hathaway J, Maibach EW (2018) Health implications of climate change: a review of the literature about the perception of the public and health professionals. Curr Environ Health Rep 5(1):197–204. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40572-018-0190-3
Hauser DJ, Schwarz N (2016) Attentive Turkers: MTurk participants perform better on online attention checks than do subject pool participants. Behav Res Meth 48(1):400–407. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-015-0578-z
Holtz D, Markham A, Cell K, Ekwurzel B (2014) National landmarks at risk. Union of Concerned Scientists, Cambridge. Retrieved from https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/national-landmarks-risk
Hornsey MJ, Harris EA, Bain PG, Fielding KS (2016) Meta-analyses of the determinants and outcomes of belief in climate change. Nat Clim Chang 6(6):622–626. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2943
Hornsey MJ, Harris EA, Fielding KS (2018) Relationships among conspiratorial beliefs, conservatism and climate scepticism across nations. Nat Clim Chang 8(7):614–620. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0157-2
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2014) Fifth assessment report. Retrieved from http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/. Accessed 20 Feb 2021
Ito K, Leung AK-y, Huang T (2020) Why do cosmopolitan individuals tend to be more pro-environmentally committed? The mediating pathways via knowledge acquisition and emotional affinity toward nature. J Environ Psychol 68:101395. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2020.101395
Jann B (2014) Plotting regression coefficients and other estimates. Stand Genomic Sci 14(4):708–737
Katoatau D (n.d.) Save our country. Retrieved from http://www.climate.gov.ki/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/ANNEX-2-David-Katoatau.pdf. Accessed 20 Feb 2021
Kotcher J, Maibach E, Rosenthal S, Gustafson A, Leiserowitz A (2020) Americans increasingly understand that climate change harms human health. Retrieved from https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/all/americans-increasingly-understand-that-climate-change-harms-human-health. Accessed 20 February 2021
Leiserowitz A, Maibach E, Rosenthal S, Kotcher J, Bergquist P, Gustafson A, Ballew M, Goldberg M (2019) Climate Activism: Beliefs, Attitudes, and Behaviors, November 2019. Yale University and George Mason University. Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, New Haven
Leiserowitz A, Maibach E, Rosenthal S, Kotcher J, Bergquist P, Gustafson A, Ballew M, Goldberg M (2019) Politics & Global Warming, November 2019. Yale University and George Mason University. Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, New Haven
Leiserowitz A, Carman J, Buttermore N, Wang X, Rosenthal S, Marlon J, Mulcahy K (2021) International Public Opinion on Climate Change. Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and Facebook Data for Good, New Haven
Leiserowitz A, Roser-Renouf C, Marlon J, Maibach E (2021b) Global warming’s six Americas: a review and recommendations for climate change communication. Curr Opin Behav Sci 42:97–103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2021.04.007
Leung AK-y, Koh K, Tam K-P (2015) Being environmentally responsible: cosmopolitan orientation predicts pro-environmental behaviors. J Environ Psychol 43:79–94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2015.05.011
Maibach EW, Nisbet M, Baldwin P, Akerlof K, Diao G (2010) Reframing climate change as a public health issue: an exploratory study of public reactions. BMC Pub Health 10(1):299. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-10-299
Marzeion B, Levermann A (2014) Loss of cultural world heritage and currently inhabited places to sea-level rise. Environ Res Lett 9(3):034001. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/9/3/034001
McDonald RI, Chai HY, Newell BR (2015) Personal experience and the ‘psychological distance’of climate change: an integrative review. J Environ Psychol 44:109–118. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2015.10.003
McFarland S, Webb M, Brown D (2012) All humanity is my ingroup: a measure and studies of identification with all humanity. J Pers Soc Psychol 103(5):830–853. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028724
Mildenberger M, Marlon J, Howe P, Leiserowitz A (2020) Democratic and Republican views of climate change (2018). Retrieved from https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/partisan-maps-2018. Accessed 20 Feb 2021
Moser SC (2010) Communicating climate change: history, challenges, process and future directions. Wiley Interdiscip Rev Clim Chang 1(1):31–53. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.11
Neuliep JW, Chaudoir M, McCroskey JC (2001) A cross-cultural comparison of ethnocentrism among Japanese and United States college students. Commun Res Rep 18(2):137–146. https://doi.org/10.1080/08824090109384791
Peer E, Brandimarte L, Samat S, Acquisti A (2017) Beyond the Turk: alternative platforms for crowdsourcing behavioral research. J Exp Soc Psychol 70:153–163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2017.01.006
Petrovic N, Madrigano J, Zaval L (2014) Motivating mitigation: when health matters more than climate change. Clim Chang 126(1):245–254. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1192-2
Podsakoff PM, MacKenzie SB, Lee JY, Podsakoff NP (2003) Common method biases in behavioral research: a critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. J Appl Psychol 88(5):879–903. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.88.5.879
Rigby CW, Rosen A, Berry HL, Hart CR (2011) If the land’s sick, we’re sick: the impact of prolonged drought on the social and emotional well-being of Aboriginal communities in rural New South Wales. Aust J Rural Health 19(5):249–254. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1440-1584.2011.01223.x
Schwartz SH (1992) Universals in the content and structure of values: theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. Adv Exp Soc Psychol 25:1–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60281-6
Smith M (2019) International poll:most expect to feel impact of climate change, many think it will make us extinct. Retrieved from https://yougov.co.uk/topics/science/articles-reports/2019/09/15/international-poll-most-expect-feel-impact-climate. Accessed 20 Feb 2021
Steg L, Perlaviciute G, Van der Werff E, Lurvink J (2014) The significance of hedonic values for environmentally relevant attitudes, preferences, and actions. Environ Behav 46(2):163–192. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916512454730
Tam K-P (2015) Are anthropomorphic persuasive appeals effective? The role of the recipient’s motivations. Br J Soc Psychol 54:187–200. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12076
Tam K-P, Chan H-W (2017) Environmental concern has a weaker association with pro-environmental behavior in some societies than others: a cross-cultural psychology perspective. J Environ Psychol 53:213–223. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2017.09.001
Tam K-P, Milfont TL (2020) Towards cross-cultural environmental psychology: a state-of-the-art review and recommendations. J Environ Psychol 71:101474. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2020.101474
UNESCO (2002) UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity. UNESCO, Paris
UNESCO (2007) Case studies on climate change and world heritage. UNESCO, Paris
United Nations (2009) State of the world’s indigenous peoples. United Nations, New York
Van Lange PA, Huckelba AL (2021) Psychological distance: how to make climate change less abstract and closer to the self. Curr Opin Psychol 42:49–53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.03.011
Weiss KR (2015) Before we drown we may die of thirst. Nature 526(7575):624–627. https://doi.org/10.1038/526624a
Wibeck V (2014) Enhancing learning, communication and public engagement about climate change–some lessons from recent literature. Environ Educ Res 20(3):387–411. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2013.812720
Wolsko C (2017) Expanding the range of environmental values: political orientation, moral foundations, and the common ingroup. J Environ Psychol 51:284–294. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2017.04.005
Wood D, Harms PD, Lowman GH, DeSimone JA (2017) Response speed and response consistency as mutually validating indicators of data quality in online samples. Soc Psychol Personal Sci 8(4):454–464. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550617703168
Funding
The work described in this study was partially supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (project no. 16602119).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
KT is the lead and corresponding author. Conceptualization: KT and AL. Study design: KT and AL. Data collection: KT, AL, and BK. Analysis: KT and BK. Writing — original draft: KT. Writing — review and editing: KT, AL, and BK.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher's note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Information
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Tam, KP., Leung, Ay. & Koh, B. Perceived cultural impacts of climate change motivate climate action and support for climate policy. Climatic Change 171, 12 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-022-03337-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-022-03337-8