The Curious Impact of Knowledge About Climate Change on Risk Perceptions and Willingness to Sacrifice. Robert E. O'Connor,* Richard J. Bord,** and Ann Fisher+
What people know about the causes of climate change matters if that knowledge relates to risk perceptions and the willingness to sacrifice. Self-assessed informedness and the overall ability to differentiate between actual and faux causes of climate change relate to perceived risk, explaining 5% of the variance. But, explained variance increases greatly when knowledge is deconstructed into two components: identification of accurate causes as well as faux causes both relate to a high level of perceived risks. In other words, people who are knowledgeable about actual causes are more likely to foresee a dangerous future, but so are people who believe that pesticides and nuclear power are causing global warming. Self-assessed informedness and the two knowledge variables maintain their significance after adding environmental value scales to the equation. What information people have -- both accurate and inaccurate -- matters even after accounting for environmental values. For willingness to sacrifice, knowledge is also important, but self-assessed informedness and identifying faux causes no longer are significant determinants of the dependent variable. In other words, people who support referenda that would direct societal resources to mitigate climate change are more likely to know the causes of climate change, but are not more likely to blame nuclear power or the use of aerosol spray cans. Believing that everything causes global warming correlates with high levels of perceived risk, but does not imply willingness to vote for sacrifices to address those risks. Men are slightly more likely to consider themselves well informed, but women are better able to identify actual causes. Men, however, are less likely to attribute climate change to faux causes than are women.
*Department of Political Science, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802
**Department of Sociology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802
+Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802
We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the National Science Foundation (Grant SRB-9409548) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Cooperative Agreement CR 824369-01), and the valuable comments from reviewers. The views expressed are the authors', and should not be attributed to their employer or funding sources.
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