Contact Information: Contact: Joseph L. Walker 703-491-3301
Efforts to Boost Climate Change Concern May Have Opposite Effect, Risk Analysis Study Shows
| Source: Society for Risk Analysis
MCLEAN, VA--(Marketwire - February 27, 2008) - Ewire -- Mass media efforts to raise American
public concern about climate change -- such as Al Gore's "An Inconvenient
Truth" and the "scientific consensus" media drumbeat -- ironically may be
having just the opposite effect, according to a new study appearing in the
scientific journal Risk Analysis.
"Personal Efficacy, the Information Environment, and Attitudes toward
Global Warming and Climate Change in the USA" by three scientists at Texas
A&M University appears in the February 2008 issue (Vol. 28, No. 1) of the
peer-reviewed journal, which is published by the McLean-based Society for
Risk Analysis (www.sra.org).
Paul Kellstedt, Sammy Zahran and Arnold Vedlitz examined results from an
original and representative sample of Americans and found that "more
informed respondents both feel less personally responsible for global
warming, and also show less concern for global warming." The researchers
also found that "confidence in scientists has unexpected effects:
respondents with high confidence in scientists feel less responsible for
global warming, and also show less concern for global warming."
The basis for the study was a national telephone survey of randomly
selected adults in July and August 2004. Overall, 1,093 interviews were
conducted, yielding a +/- 3 percent sampling error.
"Today, information about global warming and climate change is readily
available to average Americans who watch television news and who are able
to see satellite pictures of changes in ocean temperatures, or of glaciers
melting," the authors report. "But discussions of global warming are
spreading beyond the news media and into popular culture...
"An underlying assumption is that providing information about global
warming -- in effect, taking the scientific consensus and popularizing it
-- will lead to increased public concern about the risks of global
warming... The goal of this article is to test this assumption...
"Perhaps ironically, and certainly contrary to... the marketing of movies
like 'Ice Age' and 'An Inconvenient Truth,' the effects of information on
both concern for global warming and responsibility for it are exactly the
opposite of what were expected. Directly, the more information a person
has about global warming, the less responsible he or she feels for it; and
indirectly, the more information a person has about global warming, the
less concerned he or she is for it."
(Note to editors: The complete study is available upon request from Joseph
L. Walker, SRA communications advisor, 703-491-3301 or walkercom2@aol.com;
contact Walker to interview lead author Paul Kellstedt.)