Current surveys may underestimate climate change skepticism evidence from list experiments in Germany and the USA.

Strong public support is a prerequisite for ambitious and thus costly climate change mitigation policy, and strong public concern over climate change is a prerequisite for policy support. Why, then, do most public opinion surveys indicate rather high levels of concern and rather strong policy suppor...

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Autores principales:	Liam F Beiser-McGrath, Thomas Bernauer
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2021
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/01253a25a65a40fb880a3d7f1587cd0e
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:01253a25a65a40fb880a3d7f1587cd0e2021-12-02T20:05:11ZCurrent surveys may underestimate climate change skepticism evidence from list experiments in Germany and the USA.1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0251034https://doaj.org/article/01253a25a65a40fb880a3d7f1587cd0e2021-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251034https://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203Strong public support is a prerequisite for ambitious and thus costly climate change mitigation policy, and strong public concern over climate change is a prerequisite for policy support. Why, then, do most public opinion surveys indicate rather high levels of concern and rather strong policy support, while de facto mitigation efforts in most countries remain far from ambitious? One possibility is that survey measures for public concern fail to fully reveal the true attitudes of citizens due to social desirability bias. In this paper, we implemented list-experiments in representative surveys in Germany and the United States (N = 3620 and 3640 respectively) to assess such potential bias. We find evidence that people systematically misreport, that is, understate their disbelief in human caused climate change. This misreporting is particularly strong amongst politically relevant subgroups. Individuals in the top 20% of the income distribution in the United States and supporters of conservative parties in Germany exhibit significantly higher climate change skepticism according to the list experiment, relative to conventional measures. While this does not definitively mean that climate skepticism is a widespread phenomenon in these countries, it does suggest that future research should reconsider how climate change concern is measured, and what subgroups of the population are more susceptible to misreporting and why. Our findings imply that public support for ambitious climate policy may be weaker than existing survey research suggests.Liam F Beiser-McGrathThomas BernauerPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleMedicineRScienceQENPLoS ONE, Vol 16, Iss 7, p e0251034 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Liam F Beiser-McGrath Thomas Bernauer Current surveys may underestimate climate change skepticism evidence from list experiments in Germany and the USA.
description	Strong public support is a prerequisite for ambitious and thus costly climate change mitigation policy, and strong public concern over climate change is a prerequisite for policy support. Why, then, do most public opinion surveys indicate rather high levels of concern and rather strong policy support, while de facto mitigation efforts in most countries remain far from ambitious? One possibility is that survey measures for public concern fail to fully reveal the true attitudes of citizens due to social desirability bias. In this paper, we implemented list-experiments in representative surveys in Germany and the United States (N = 3620 and 3640 respectively) to assess such potential bias. We find evidence that people systematically misreport, that is, understate their disbelief in human caused climate change. This misreporting is particularly strong amongst politically relevant subgroups. Individuals in the top 20% of the income distribution in the United States and supporters of conservative parties in Germany exhibit significantly higher climate change skepticism according to the list experiment, relative to conventional measures. While this does not definitively mean that climate skepticism is a widespread phenomenon in these countries, it does suggest that future research should reconsider how climate change concern is measured, and what subgroups of the population are more susceptible to misreporting and why. Our findings imply that public support for ambitious climate policy may be weaker than existing survey research suggests.
format	article
author	Liam F Beiser-McGrath Thomas Bernauer
author_facet	Liam F Beiser-McGrath Thomas Bernauer
author_sort	Liam F Beiser-McGrath
title	Current surveys may underestimate climate change skepticism evidence from list experiments in Germany and the USA.
title_short	Current surveys may underestimate climate change skepticism evidence from list experiments in Germany and the USA.
title_full	Current surveys may underestimate climate change skepticism evidence from list experiments in Germany and the USA.
title_fullStr	Current surveys may underestimate climate change skepticism evidence from list experiments in Germany and the USA.
title_full_unstemmed	Current surveys may underestimate climate change skepticism evidence from list experiments in Germany and the USA.
title_sort	current surveys may underestimate climate change skepticism evidence from list experiments in germany and the usa.
publisher	Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/01253a25a65a40fb880a3d7f1587cd0e
work_keys_str_mv	AT liamfbeisermcgrath currentsurveysmayunderestimateclimatechangeskepticismevidencefromlistexperimentsingermanyandtheusa AT thomasbernauer currentsurveysmayunderestimateclimatechangeskepticismevidencefromlistexperimentsingermanyandtheusa
_version_	1718375462068027392

Current surveys may underestimate climate change skepticism evidence from list experiments in Germany and the USA.

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