Democracy influences climate change concern

Mapping Intimacies ◽

10.31235/osf.io/6vk9d ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Sebastian Levi ◽

Matthew H. Goldberg

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Causal Effect ◽

Qualitative Interviews ◽

Civil Liberty ◽

Civil Liberties ◽

State Repression ◽

Causal Pathway ◽

Climate Change Concern ◽

Using Data

Climate change concern varies widely across countries. In 2019, 80% of Greeks were at least somewhat worried about climate change, compared to 20% of Egyptians. We argue that variation in climate change concern is partially caused by differences in democracy. Civil liberties protect climate communicators from state repression, censorship, and violence. We offer empirical evidence for the causal effect of democracy on climate change concern using data from 611,909 individuals from 118 countries collected between 2007 and 2019. Exploiting variation in civil liberties across countries and time, we find one unit change in the 7-point civil liberty index to influence climate change concern by 2.3 [95% CI: ±1] percentage points. The effect is much stronger in wealthy countries and less educated cohorts. We also present evidence for our causal pathway using qualitative interviews and by modeling the association between democracy, climate protest, media coverage, and climate concern with simultaneous equations.

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The Effects of Weather-Induced Migration on Sons of the Soil Riots in India

World Politics ◽

10.1017/s0043887115000222 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 67 (4) ◽

pp. 760-794 ◽

Cited By ~ 33

Author(s):

Rikhil R. Bhavnani ◽

Bethany Lacina

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Natural Disasters ◽

Environmental Degradation ◽

Central Government ◽

Causal Effect ◽

Host Population ◽

Domestic Migration ◽

Weather Shocks ◽

Political Resources ◽

Using Data

Migration is thought to cause sons of the soil conflict, particularly if natives tend to be unemployed. Using data from India, the authors investigate the causal effect of domestic migration on riots by instrumenting for migration using weather shocks in migrants’ places of origin. They find a direct effect of migration on riots, but do not find that this effect is larger in places with more native unemployment. They argue and find evidence that migration is less likely to cause rioting where the host population is politically aligned with the central government. Politically privileged host populations can appease nativists and reduce migration through means that are less costly than rioting. Without these political resources, hosts resort to violence. Beyond furthering the sons of the soil literature, the authors detail a political mechanism linking natural disasters and, possibly, climate change and environmental degradation to riots, and demonstrate a widely applicable strategy for recovering the causal effect of migration on violence.

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Navigating through the jungle of information. Informational self-efficacy predicts climate change-related media exposure, knowledge, and behaviour

Climatic Change ◽

10.1007/s10584-020-02918-9 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 163 (4) ◽

pp. 2097-2116

Author(s):

Laura S. Loy ◽

Karen R. S. Hamann ◽

Gerhard Reese

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Self Efficacy ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Online Survey ◽

Causal Effect ◽

Media Exposure ◽

Climate System ◽

Climate Change Communication ◽

Change Communication ◽

The Impact

AbstractClimate change is a complex issue and understanding it is not an easy endeavour. An abundance of information is available through media and a lot of research has dealt with the question of how to best communicate this issue to the public. However, uncertainty and scepticism remain. In this paper, we argue that the subjective capability of informing oneself satisfactorily about climate change (i.e. informational self-efficacy) to reach goals like forming an opinion, evaluating political decisions regarding climate change, or behaving in a climate protective manner might be a crucial determinant of people’s engagement with the issue. In an online survey with a quota sample of German residents (N = 498), informational self-efficacy positively predicted people’s exposure to climate change communication in the media, their knowledge about the climate system and climate protective behaviours, and the extent to which they actually engaged in climate protective actions. Moreover, informational self-efficacy positively predicted climate protective behaviour and climate system knowledge indirectly through media exposure—but not behavioural knowledge. Hence, next to optimising the provided climate change communication, we suggest to strengthen people’s confidence in dealing with it through media literacy trainings and examine the causal effect of these trainings on informational self-efficacy and climate change engagement. Furthermore, the impact of different behaviours on climate change should be more often and more concretely discussed in media coverage.

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What Stymies Action on Climate Change? Religious Institutions, Marginalization, and Efficacy in Kenya

Perspectives on Politics ◽

10.1017/s153759272000479x ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-18

Author(s):

Lauren Honig ◽

Amy Erica Smith ◽

Jaimie Bleck

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Religious Institutions ◽

Religious Groups ◽

State Repression ◽

Address Climate Change ◽

Policy Responses ◽

Vulnerability To Climate Change ◽

History Of ◽

Muslim Communities ◽

Critical Link

Addressing climate change requires coordinated policy responses that incorporate the needs of the most impacted populations. Yet even communities that are greatly concerned about climate change may remain on the sidelines. We examine what stymies some citizens’ mobilization in Kenya, a country with a long history of environmental activism and high vulnerability to climate change. We foreground efficacy—a belief that one’s actions can create change—as a critical link transforming concern into action. However, that link is often missing for marginalized ethnic, socioeconomic, and religious groups. Analyzing interviews, focus groups, and survey data, we find that Muslims express much lower efficacy to address climate change than other religious groups; the gap cannot be explained by differences in science beliefs, issue concern, ethnicity, or demographics. Instead, we attribute it to understandings of marginalization vis-à-vis the Kenyan state—understandings socialized within the local institutions of Muslim communities affected by state repression.

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Comparing respondents who passed versus failed an Instructional Manipulation Check: A case study about support for climate change policies

International Journal of Market Research ◽

10.1177/14707853211023039 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 63 (4) ◽

pp. 408-415

Author(s):

Maria Rubio Juan ◽

Melanie Revilla

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

External Validity ◽

Structural Equation ◽

Online Survey ◽

Equation Modeling ◽

Manipulation Check ◽

Climate Change Policies ◽

Instructional Manipulation ◽

Using Data

The presence of satisficers among survey respondents threatens survey data quality. To identify such respondents, Oppenheimer et al. developed the Instructional Manipulation Check (IMC), which has been used as a tool to exclude observations from the analyses. However, this practice has raised concerns regarding its effects on the external validity and the substantive conclusions of studies excluding respondents who fail an IMC. Thus, more research on the differences between respondents who pass versus fail an IMC regarding sociodemographic and attitudinal variables is needed. This study compares respondents who passed versus failed an IMC both for descriptive and causal analyses based on structural equation modeling (SEM) using data from an online survey implemented in Spain in 2019. These data were analyzed by Rubio Juan and Revilla without taking into account the results of the IMC. We find that those who passed the IMC do differ significantly from those who failed for two sociodemographic and five attitudinal variables, out of 18 variables compared. Moreover, in terms of substantive conclusions, differences between those who passed and failed the IMC vary depending on the specific variables under study.

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Public perceptions of who counts as a scientist for controversial science

Public Understanding of Science ◽

10.1177/0963662519856768 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 28 (7) ◽

pp. 797-811 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Brianne Suldovsky ◽

Asheley Landrum ◽

Natalie Jomini Stroud

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Political Ideology ◽

Genetically Modified Organisms ◽

The United States ◽

Public Perceptions ◽

The Public ◽

The Us ◽

Science Media

In an era where expertise is increasingly critiqued, this study draws from the research on expertise and scientist stereotyping to explore who the public considers to be a scientist in the context of media coverage about climate change and genetically modified organisms. Using survey data from the United States, we find that political ideology and science knowledge affect who the US public believes is a scientist in these domains. Our results suggest important differences in the role of science media attention and science media selection in the publics “scientist” labeling. In addition, we replicate previous work and find that compared to other people who work in science, those with PhDs in Biology and Chemistry are most commonly seen as scientists.

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Power, the Pacific Islands, and the Prestige Press: A Case Study of How Climate Reporting is Influenced by UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Summits

The International Journal of Press/Politics ◽

10.1177/19401612211018067 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 194016122110180

Author(s):

Meghan M. Shea ◽

James Painter ◽

Shannon Osaka

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Pacific Islands ◽

Structured Interviews ◽

The Pacific ◽

Emotional Appeals ◽

Issue Attention ◽

Quantitative Results

While studies have investigated UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meetings as drivers of climate change reporting as well as the geopolitical role of Pacific Islands in these international forums, little research examines the intersection: how media coverage of Pacific Islands and climate change (PICC) may be influenced by, or may influence, UNFCCC meetings. We analyze two decades of reporting on PICC in American, British, and Australian newspapers—looking at both volume and content of coverage—and expand the quantitative results with semi-structured interviews with journalists and Pacific stakeholders. Issue attention on PICC increases and the content changes significantly in the periods around UNFCCC meetings, with shifts from language about vulnerability outside of UNFCCC periods to language about agency and solutions. We explore the implications of these differences in coverage for both agenda setting and the amplification of emotional appeals in UNFCCC contexts.

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Causal inference in continuous time: an example on prostate cancer therapy

Biostatistics ◽

10.1093/biostatistics/kxy036 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

pp. 172-185 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Pål Christie Ryalen ◽

Mats Julius Stensrud ◽

Sophie Fosså ◽

Kjetil Røysland

Keyword(s):

Prostate Cancer ◽

Continuous Time ◽

Causal Effect ◽

Structural Models ◽

Marginal Structural Models ◽

Cancer Treatments ◽

Discrete Parameter ◽

Inverse Probability Weights ◽

Using Data ◽

Prostate Cancer Treatments

Abstract In marginal structural models (MSMs), time is traditionally treated as a discrete parameter. In survival analysis on the other hand, we study processes that develop in continuous time. Therefore, Røysland (2011. A martingale approach to continuous-time marginal structural models. Bernoulli 17, 895–915) developed the continuous-time MSMs, along with continuous-time weights. The continuous-time weights are conceptually similar to the inverse probability weights that are used in discrete time MSMs. Here, we demonstrate that continuous-time MSMs may be used in practice. First, we briefly describe the causal model assumptions using counting process notation, and we suggest how causal effect estimates can be derived by calculating continuous-time weights. Then, we describe how additive hazard models can be used to find such effect estimates. Finally, we apply this strategy to compare medium to long-term differences between the two prostate cancer treatments radical prostatectomy and radiation therapy, using data from the Norwegian Cancer Registry. In contrast to the results of a naive analysis, we find that the marginal cumulative incidence of treatment failure is similar between the strategies, accounting for the competing risk of other death.

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Climate change in the Cameroonian press: An analysis of its representations

Public Understanding of Science ◽

10.1177/0963662520976013 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 096366252097601

Author(s):

Nicole Kay ◽

Sandrine Gaymard

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Psychological Distance ◽

Environmental Issue ◽

Social Psychological ◽

Global Environmental Issue ◽

Global Environmental ◽

The World ◽

The Relationship ◽

Opening Up

Climate change is a global environmental issue and its outcome will affect societies around the world. In recent years, we have seen a growing literature on media coverage of climate change, but, to date, no study has assessed the situation in Cameroon, although it is considered to be one of the world’s most affected and vulnerable regions. This study attempted to address this deficit by analysing how climate change is represented in the Cameroonian media. A similarity analysis was performed on three newspapers published in 2013–2016. Results showed that climate coverage focused on politics and international involvement. It seems disconnected from local realities, potentially opening up a spatial and social psychological distance. The relationship between the representation of climate change and that of poverty is an area for further exploration.

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