Social ties and concern for global warming

Juha Itkonen ()

Climatic Change, 2015, vol. 132, issue 2, 173-192

Abstract: Recent research focusing on social factors affecting risk perceptions has suggested that social networks might help to explain why differences of opinion about climate change persist across segments of the lay public despite the scientific consensus. Even though concern for global warming in itself might seem irrelevant for most social ties, we show that it is significant enough to be reflected in the structure of social networks. To do this, we programmed a Facebook application that collected survey data on concerns and network data on friendships. We found that respondents tend to have friends with similar concerns as their own, the unconcerned respondents have fewer friends, and any two respondents who disagreed about the seriousness of global warming were less than half as likely to be friends. The results indicate that the structure of the social network may hinder changes in opinions, explaining why opinions persist despite the scientific consensus. The results suggest that the communication of climate science could be improved by strategies that aim to overcome these network effects. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Keywords: Climate change; Social networks; Science communication (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10584-015-1424-0

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