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A new, valid measure of climate change understanding: associations with risk perception

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Abstract

The relationship between climate change understanding and other variables, including risk perception, beliefs, and worldviews, is an important consideration as we work to increase public attention to climate change. Despite significant effort to develop rigorous mechanisms for measuring affective variables, measurement of climate change understanding is often relegated to unvalidated questions or question sets. To remedy this situation, we constructed and analyzed a climate change concept inventory using a suite of validity and reliability steps, including Rasch analysis. The resultant 21-item test has a high degree of validity and reliability for measuring understanding about basic climate change processes. Inventory scores along with other variables were included in a model of climate change risk perception, providing both concurrent validity for the test and new insight into the importance of understanding, worldview, and values on risk perception. We find that environmental beliefs and cultural cognition worldview play a larger role in predicting an individual’s risk perception than knowledge. Implications for addressing climate change are considered.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to everyone who participated in this research, as well as members of the Geocognition Research Lab for a review of this manuscript.

Funding

This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation under grant no. DUE-1504659 to Libarkin and Bowles.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geocognition Research Lab, 207 Natural Science, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, 48823, USA

    Julie C. Libarkin

  2. Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado-Boulder, UCB449, 1540 30th Street, Boulder, CO, 80303, USA

    Anne U. Gold

  3. Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, University of British Columbia, 2020-2207 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada

    Sara E. Harris

  4. Department of Geosciences, Auburn University, 2050 Beard Eaves Coliseum, Auburn, AL, 36849, USA

    Karen S. McNeal

  5. Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Michigan State University, 2E Human Ecology Building, 552 W. Circle Dr., East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    Ryan P. Bowles

Authors
  1. Julie C. Libarkin
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  3. Sara E. Harris
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  4. Karen S. McNeal
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  5. Ryan P. Bowles
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Correspondence to Julie C. Libarkin.

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Libarkin, J.C., Gold, A.U., Harris, S.E. et al. A new, valid measure of climate change understanding: associations with risk perception. Climatic Change 150, 403–416 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-018-2279-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-018-2279-y

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