Global evidence on the relationship between extreme weather events and support for climate policies
Combining large-scale natural and social science data, we investigate how the actual impacts of extreme weather events and subjective attribution of these events to climate change influence climate policy support in 68 countries.
Abstract
Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and intense due to climate change. This might affect support for climate policies, especially if more people attribute these events to climate change. Yet little is known about whether actual impacts of extreme events and subjective attribution of these events to climate change influence climate policy support, especially in the Global South. Combining large-scale natural and social science data, we develop a measure of actual impacts of extreme weather events on population and investigate whether actual impacts and subjective attribution of these events to climate change relate to climate policy support in 68 countries (N = 71,922). Globally, most people support climate policies and link extreme weather events to climate change. We find that subjective attribution is associated with policy support, whereas actual impacts are mostly not. Our results suggest that demonstrating the link between extreme weather events and climate change likely increases policy support.
Figure 4: Summary of multilevel models predicting climate policy support
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Please cite as: Cologna, V., Meiler, S., Kropf, C. M., Lüthi, S., Mede, N. G., Bresch, D. N., Lecuona, O., Berger, S., Besley, J. C., Brick, C., Joubert, M., Maibach, E., Oreskes, N., Schäfer, M. S., & van der Linden, S. (2024). Global evidence on the relationship between extreme weather events and support for climate policies. Preprint. https://osf.io/preprints/osf/mq9x6
Link to preprint: https://osf.io/preprints/osf/mq9x6
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Niels G. Mede
Science Communication Researcher
I am a Senior Research and Teaching Associate at the Department of Communication and Media Research (IKMZ) of the University of Zurich, where I also completed a PhD in communication studies. My work focuses on science communication, digital media, public perceptions of science, threats and attacks against scholars, climate change communication, and survey methodology. Over the last years, I was a visiting researcher at the Department of Life Sciences Communication of the University of Wisconsin—Madison (2022), the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford (2023), and the Digital Media Research Centre at the Queensland University of Technology (2024).