General knowledge about climate change, factors influencing risk perception and willingness to insure

Claas Menny, Daniel Osberghaus, Max Pohl and Ute Werner

No 11-060, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: In two empirical surveys in Germany the link between the information respondents have about climate change and their risk perception of the phenomenon was analysed. We found that a better understanding of the effects of climate change might lead to a decrease of the perceived hazard. In contrast, a high self-declared knowledge about climate change might correspond with higher risk perception. Further factors affecting the risk perception of climate change are gender, experience of extreme weather events and trust in external aid. Surprisingly, information campaigns based on scientific facts are not effective for increasing risk perception and willingness to insure. Higher risk perception might induce higher interest in precautionary measures like insurance.

Keywords: Climate Change; Knowledge Illusion; Insurance; Risk Perception; Information; Psychometric paradigm (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 Q54 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-ene, nep-env and nep-ias
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/51357/1/671534386.pdf (application/pdf)

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:zbw:zewdip:11060

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().