Abstract
Previous research indicate that most people believe in climate change and are concerned for it. However, only a minority is willing to accept individual costs to mitigate climate change. Therefore, recent research is studying mechanisms affecting individuals’ willingness to support climate policies and to engage in pro-environmental behaviours. This research aims at investigating first whether providing information about recent extreme weather events affect the willingness to accept cuts in the standard of living for mitigating climate change. Second, we test whether the effect varies according to the type of climate disaster mentioned (glacier collapse vs floods). Finally, we aim at assessing the heterogeneity of the effects according to some individual features that might moderate the priming effect of information about climate disaster. To answer our research questions, we employ two survey experiments included in the fifth and the sixth wave of the ResPOnsE COVID-19 data, collected in Italy respectively in 2022 and 2023. In addition to a control group, in the first experiment a randomized group of respondents was primed by randomly recalling the collapse of two glaciers in summer 2022 (Marmolada in Italy and Grand Combin in Switzerland), while in the second experiment the priming recalls the floods happened in the region Emilia-Romagna in spring 2023. Our preliminary results show that recalling an extreme weather event do affect the willingness to limit the standard of living to mitigate climate change, but the effect depends on the type of disaster considered.
POPCLIMA has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research And Innovation Programme (Grant Agreement no 101002973). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
Collegamento Microsoft Teams
Organizzazione
Raya Muttarak