Ten-year panel data confirm generation gap but climate beliefs increase at similar rates across ages

AbstractAccumulating evidence indicates that climate change awareness and concern has increased globally, but commentators suggest a climate change generation gap whereby younger people care more about climate change than older people. Here we use a decade of panel data from 56,513 New Zealanders to test whether belief that “Climate change is real” and “Climate change is caused by humans” increased over the 2009-2018 period; and whether changes are uniform across 12 five-year birth cohorts spanning those born from 1936 to 1995. Results confirm a generation gap in mean (intercept) climate change beliefs but not in over-time increase (slope). The generation gap occurs because older cohorts started from a lower initial belief level (circa 2009), but all age cohorts increased their belief level at a similar rate over the last decade; and these results were not qualified by respondents’ gender. The findings offer hope for collective action that bridges efforts across generations.

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Personality change and sustainability attitudes and behaviors

European Journal of Personality ◽

10.1177/08902070211016260 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 089020702110162

Author(s):

Christopher J Hopwood ◽

Ted Schwaba ◽

Taciano L Milfont ◽

Chris G Sibley ◽

Wiebke Bleidorn

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Personality Traits ◽

Personality Change ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Environmentally Sustainable ◽

Age Cohorts ◽

Attitudes And Behaviors ◽

And Behaviors ◽

The Individual ◽

Over Time

Withstanding the climate crisis will depend in part on individuals behaving in a more environmentally sustainable manner. However, relatively little is known about the individual factors that promote sustainable attitudes and behaviors (SABs). Although there are established cross-sectional associations between personality traits and SABs, it is unclear whether changes in personality are related to increases in SABs over time, and how personality is differentially related to specific SABs. Using data from 61,479 participants in New Zealand, we tested preregistered hypotheses about how personality codevelops with valuing the environment, believing in climate change, concern about climate change, personal environmental efficacy, personal environmental sacrifice, and support for the Green Party. We found that SABs generally increased from 2009 to 2017, although there was variation across age cohorts, SAB variables, and samples. We replicated concurrent correlations between broad personality traits—particularly Agreeableness, Openness, and Honesty/Humility—and SABs and present novel evidence that increases in SAB are related to changes in traits, particularly Agreeableness. These findings have implications for both understanding the factors associated with changes in SABs over time and understanding the factors that drive personality change.

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Cultivating Ice over Time: On the Idea of Timeless Knowledge and Places in the Himalayas

Anthropologica ◽

10.3138/anth.582.t03 ◽

1969 ◽

Vol 58 (2) ◽

pp. 193-210 ◽

Cited By ~ 20

Author(s):

Karine Gagné

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Sense Of Community ◽

Local Knowledge ◽

Local Communities ◽

International Organisations ◽

Change Over Time ◽

Local Populations ◽

Close Study ◽

Indian Himalayas ◽

Over Time

Assumptions that local communities have an endogenous capacity to adapt to climate change stemming from time-tested knowledge and an inherent sense of community that prompts mobilisation are becoming increasingly common in material produced by international organisations. This discourse, which relies on ahistorical and apolitical conceptions of localities and populations, is based on ideas of timeless knowledge and places. Analysing the water-place nexus in Ladakh, in the Indian Himalayas, through a close study of glacier practices as they change over time, the article argues that local knowledge is subject to change and must be analysed in light of changing conceptions and experiences of place by the state and by local populations alike.

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Confidence in Local, National, and International Scientists on Climate Change

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13010272 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 13 (1) ◽

pp. 272

Author(s):

Aaron C. Sparks ◽

Heather Hodges ◽

Sarah Oliver ◽

Eric R. A. N. Smith

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Public Policy ◽

News Media ◽

Internet Survey ◽

Party Affiliation ◽

The Public ◽

Research Findings ◽

Scientific Report ◽

Media Reports ◽

Change Beliefs

In many public policy areas, such as climate change, news media reports about scientific research play an important role. In presenting their research, scientists are providing guidance to the public regarding public policy choices. How do people decide which scientists and scientific claims to believe? This is a question we address by drawing on the psychology of persuasion. We propose the hypothesis that people are more likely to believe local scientists than national or international scientists. We test this hypothesis with an experiment embedded in a national Internet survey. Our experiment yielded null findings, showing that people do not discount or ignore research findings on climate change if they come from Europe instead of Washington-based scientists or a leading university in a respondent’s home state. This reinforces evidence that climate change beliefs are relatively stable, based on party affiliation, and not malleable based on the source of the scientific report.

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Dynamic Signaling with Dropout Risk

American Economic Journal Microeconomics ◽

10.1257/mic.20120112 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 57-82 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Francesc Dilmé ◽

Fei Li

Keyword(s):

Time Varying ◽

High Quality ◽

Indivisible Good ◽

Initial Belief ◽

Costly Delay ◽

Over Time

We study the role of dropout risk in dynamic signaling. A seller privately knows the quality of an indivisible good and decides when to trade. In each period, he may draw a dropout shock that forces him to trade immediately. To avoid costly delay, the seller with a low-quality good voluntarily pools with early dropouts, implying that the expected quality of the good increases over time. We characterize the time-varying equilibrium trading dynamics. It is demonstrated that the maximum equilibrium delay of trade is decreasing in the initial belief that the good is of high quality. (JEL C73, D82, D83)

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Is a Rights-Based Approach to Climate Action Viable? Clarifying Longitudinal Relations between Individuals’ Support for Human Rights and Climate Change Beliefs

SSRN Electronic Journal ◽

10.2139/ssrn.3979971 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Ariana E. Athy ◽

Petar Milojev ◽

Nathan L. Gray ◽

Danny Osborne ◽

Chris Sibley ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Human Rights ◽

Climate Action ◽

Change Beliefs

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Visualizing Belief in Meritocracy, 1930–2010

Socius Sociological Research for a Dynamic World ◽

10.1177/2378023118811805 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 4 ◽

pp. 237802311881180 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Jonathan J. B. Mijs

Keyword(s):

Survey Data ◽

Representative Sample ◽

Western World ◽

Birth Cohorts ◽

Popular Belief ◽

Time Period ◽

Level Data ◽

Two Measures ◽

Time Periods ◽

Over Time

In this figure I describe the long trend in popular belief in meritocracy across the Western world between 1930 and 2010. Studying trends in attitudes is limited by the paucity of survey data that can be compared across countries and over time. Here, I show how to complement survey waves with cohort-level data. Repeated surveys draw on a representative sample of the population to describe the typical beliefs held by citizens in a given country and period. Leveraging the fact that citizens surveyed in a given year were born in different time-periods allows for a comparison of beliefs across birth cohorts. The latter overlaps with the former, but considerably extends the time period covered by the data. Taken together, the two measures give a “triangulated” longitudinal record of popular belief in meritocracy. I find that in most countries, popular belief in meritocracy is (much) stronger for more recent periods and cohorts.

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Trajectories of Sport Participation Among Children and Adolescents Across Different Socio-Economic Categories: Multilevel Findings From the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth

Sociology of Sport Journal ◽

10.1123/ssj.2018-0096 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 37 (3) ◽

pp. 264-268

Author(s):

Tom Perks

Keyword(s):

Panel Data ◽

Children And Adolescents ◽

Sport Participation ◽

Economic Status ◽

Empirical Work ◽

Longitudinal Survey ◽

Children And Youth ◽

National Longitudinal Survey ◽

Socio Economic Status ◽

Over Time

Building upon prior theoretical and empirical work, this study explores the sport participation trajectories of children across different socio-economic status (SES) categories to assess the possibility of changes in the SES-sport participation relationship as children age. Using representative panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, a multilevel analysis of 4,858 children aged 6 to 9 suggests that as children age the SES effect on sport participation persists over time. However, the SES effect on sport participation appears to have relatively small predictive import compared to other factors.

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Up with ecology, down with economy? The consolidation of the idea of climate change mitigation in the global public sphere

European Journal of Communication ◽

10.1177/0267323118790155 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 33 (6) ◽

pp. 587-603 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Tuomas Ylä-Anttila ◽

Juho Vesa ◽

Veikko Eranti ◽

Anna Kukkonen ◽

Tomi Lehtimäki ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Public Sphere ◽

Climate Change Mitigation ◽

Analytical Framework ◽

Economic Evaluations ◽

Business Elites ◽

The Public ◽

The Public Sphere ◽

Change Mitigation ◽

Over Time

Building on theories of valuation and evaluation, we develop an analytical framework that outlines six elements of the process of consolidation of an idea in the public sphere. We then use the framework to analyse the process of consolidation of the idea of climate change mitigation between 1997 and 2013, focusing on the interplay between ecological and economic evaluations. Our content analysis of 1274 articles in leading newspapers in five countries around the globe shows that (1) ecological arguments increase over time, (2) economic arguments decrease over time, (3) the visibility of environmental nongovernmental organizations as carriers of ecological ideas increases over time, (4) the visibility of business actors correspondingly decreases, (5) ecological ideas are increasingly adopted by political and business elites and (6) a compromise emerges between ecological and economic evaluations, in the form of the argument that climate change mitigation boosts, rather than hinders economic growth.

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