Changing minds about global warming: vicarious experience predicts self-reported opinion change in the USA

Matthew T. Ballew (), Jennifer R. Marlon, Matthew H. Goldberg, Edward W. Maibach, Seth A. Rosenthal, Emily Aiken and Anthony Leiserowitz
Additional contact information
Matthew T. Ballew: Yale University
Jennifer R. Marlon: Yale University
Matthew H. Goldberg: Yale University
Edward W. Maibach: George Mason University
Seth A. Rosenthal: Yale University
Emily Aiken: University of Delaware
Anthony Leiserowitz: Yale University

Climatic Change, 2022, vol. 173, issue 3, No 3, 25 pages

Abstract: Abstract Americans increasingly accept that global warming is happening and a serious threat. Using secondary data from national probability surveys of the US adult population and preregistered hypotheses, we explore how and why Americans self-report changing their minds about global warming. Common reasons included learning more about the issue, hearing or seeing the effects of global warming, and personally experiencing its effects. We tested these reasons, as well as additional factors known to influence global warming opinion, including perceptions of social norms, media attention, and exposure to extreme weather, to assess their relative strength in predicting self-reported opinion change. As expected, perceived experience with global warming—particularly vicarious experience or seeing/hearing others experience its effects—emerged as a top correlate, even while statistically controlling for perceptions of social norms and attention to partisan-leaning media like Fox News. Perceived personal experience was a stronger correlate of self-reported opinion change among Republicans, whereas learning more about global warming was a stronger correlate among Democrats. Also as expected, perceiving social norms supportive of climate action was associated with positive self-reported opinion change, particularly among Republicans. Further, attention to the Fox News Channel was associated with negative self-reported opinion change but only among Republicans. Although this research is exploratory and uses self-reported data, it suggests that personalizing and localizing the threat of climate change, and enhancing the norm that most people support action, may be important factors to investigate in future longitudinal research on public opinion change and communication strategies.

Keywords: Climate change; Global warming; Public opinion; Politics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-022-03397-w Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:climat:v:173:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1007_s10584-022-03397-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10584

DOI: 10.1007/s10584-022-03397-w

Access Statistics for this article

Climatic Change is currently edited by M. Oppenheimer and G. Yohe

More articles in Climatic Change from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().