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Article
Meta-analysis of the relationship between climate change experience and climate change perception
Environmental Research Communications (2022)
  • Peter D Howe
Abstract
Will climate change experience shape people's climate change perception? To examine the evidence, we performed a pre-registered meta-analysis using data from 302 studies, covering 351,378 observations. Our results find that climate change experience only has a weak positive correlation with climate change awareness in general (r = 0.098, 95% CI 0.0614, 0.1348), and the effect sizes vary considerably across different climate events. General hazard and temperature anomalies experiences have significant correlations, but other events exhibit no or neglectable effects. The moderator analysis showed that self-reported studies result in higher correlations, whereas studies based on victims' actual experiences report lower effect sizes. Our study suggests that people's climate change experiences may not be effective in shaping their awareness of climate change, which is likely due to people's attribution style and adaptability. The importance of proactive education thus is further emphasized to raise the awareness of climate change.
Disciplines
Publication Date
2022
DOI
Will climate change experience shape people's climate change perception? To examine the evidence, we performed a pre-registered meta-analysis using data from 302 studies, covering 351,378 observations. Our results find that climate change experience only has a weak positive correlation with climate change awareness in general (r = 0.098, 95% CI 0.0614, 0.1348), and the effect sizes vary considerably across different climate events. General hazard and temperature anomalies experiences have significant correlations, but other events exhibit no or neglectable effects. The moderator analysis showed that self-reported studies result in higher correlations, whereas studies based on victims' actual experiences report lower effect sizes. Our study suggests that people's climate change experiences may not be effective in shaping their awareness of climate change, which is likely due to people's attribution style and adaptability. The importance of proactive education thus is further emphasized to raise the awareness of climate change.
Citation Information
Peter D Howe. "Meta-analysis of the relationship between climate change experience and climate change perception" Environmental Research Communications Vol. 4 Iss. 10 (2022) p. 105005
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/peter_howe/106/