Relationships between climate change perceptions and climate adaptation actions: policy support, information seeking, and behaviour

A. M. Valkengoed (), G. Perlaviciute and L. Steg
Additional contact information
A. M. Valkengoed: University of Groningen
G. Perlaviciute: University of Groningen
L. Steg: University of Groningen

Climatic Change, 2022, vol. 171, issue 1, No 14, 20 pages

Abstract: Abstract People are increasingly exposed to climate-related hazards, including floods, droughts, and vector-borne diseases. A broad repertoire of adaptation actions is needed to adapt to these various hazards. It is therefore important to identify general psychological antecedents that motivate people to engage in many different adaptation actions, in response to different hazards, and in different contexts. We examined if people’s climate change perceptions act as such general antecedents. Questionnaire studies in the Netherlands (n = 3,546) and the UK (n = 803) revealed that the more people perceive climate change as real, human-caused, and having negative consequences, the more likely they are to support adaptation policy and to seek information about local climate impacts and ways to adapt. These relationships were stronger and more consistent when the information and policies were introduced as measures to adapt to risks of climate change specifically. However, the three types of climate change perceptions were inconsistently associated with intentions to implement adaptation behaviours (e.g. installing a green roof). This suggests that climate change perceptions can be an important gateway for adaptation actions, especially policy support and information seeking, but that it may be necessary to address additional barriers in order to fully harness the potential of climate change perceptions to promote widespread adaptation behaviour.

Keywords: Climate change perceptions; Adaptation; Heatwaves; Information seeking; Policy support (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-022-03338-7 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:171:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1007_s10584-022-03338-7

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

DOI: 10.1007/s10584-022-03338-7

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 ().