Rüttenauer, Tobias;
(2023)
More talk, no action? The link between exposure to extreme weather events, climate change belief and pro-environmental behaviour.
European Societies
10.1080/14616696.2023.2277281.
(In press).
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Abstract
Previous research has shown a link between extreme weather events and people’s beliefs about climate change and their pro-environmental behaviour. This indicates that people may become more environmentally friendly amid increasing extreme weather events. Still, the influence of experiencing extreme weather events on actual behaviour has rarely been tested with large-scale individual-level data and longitudinal methods. This study links panel data from 35,678 individuals to floods across England and heatwaves across the UK and applies within-person estimators to account for pre-existing differences between affected and unaffected individuals. Results reveal that individuals are more likely to believe in climate change after being affected by a geographically proximate flood or a temporally proximate heatwave. This association is stronger among initially right-leaning partisans and those initially more sceptic about the existence of climate change, thereby indicating attitudinal updating due to experiential learning. However, those exposed to extreme weather events do not change their environmental behaviour such as energy saving, sustainable shopping or mode of transportation. Even among those who are more likely to believe in climate change, people’s behaviour does not react to extreme weather events.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | More talk, no action? The link between exposure to extreme weather events, climate change belief and pro-environmental behaviour |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/14616696.2023.2277281 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/14616696.2023.2277281 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
| Keywords: | Climate change; climate change belief; climate change mitigation; pro-environmental behaviour; extreme weather events; floods; heatwaves; individual panel data |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10181314 |
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