Experience of extreme weather affects climate change mitigation and adaptation responses

Christina Demski; Stuart Capstick; Nick Pidgeon; Robert Gennaro Sposato; Alexa Spence

doi:10.1007/s10584-016-1837-4

Experience of extreme weather affects climate change mitigation and adaptation responses

Christina Demski, Stuart Capstick, Nick Pidgeon, Robert Gennaro Sposato, Alexa Spence

Department of Psychology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

293 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

The winter of 2013/2014 saw a series of severe storms hit the UK, leading to widespread flooding, a major emergency response and extensive media exposure. Previous research indicates that experiencing extreme weather events has the potential to heighten engagement with climate change, however the process by which this occurs remains largely unknown, and establishing a clear causal relationship from experience to perceptions is methodologically challenging. The UK winter flooding offered a natural experiment to examine this question in detail. We compare individuals personally affected by flooding (n = 162) to a nationally representative sample (n = 975). We show that direct experience of flooding leads to an overall increased salience of climate change, pronounced emotional responses and greater perceived personal vulnerability and risk perceptions. We also present the first evidence that direct flooding experience can give rise to behavioural intentions beyond individual sustainability actions, including support for mitigation policies, and personal climate adaptation in matters unrelated to the direct experience.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	149-164
Number of pages	16
Journal	Climatic Change
Volume	140
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-016-1837-4
Publication status	Published - 1 Jan 2017

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research was supported by a research grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (ES/M005135/1) as well as the Climate Change Consortium of Wales (C3W) and the Cardiff Sustainable Places Research Institute. The authors wish to thank members of the advisory panel, Pete Bailey, George Marshall, Dr. Adam Corner, Dr. Katharine Steentjes and Ipsos MORI for assistance with the survey and analysis; as well as Dr Shantini Paranjothy for invaluable advice on how to measure flooding experiences.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, The Author(s).

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Global and Planetary Change
Atmospheric Science

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1007/s10584-016-1837-4Licence: CC BY

Cite this

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abstract = "The winter of 2013/2014 saw a series of severe storms hit the UK, leading to widespread flooding, a major emergency response and extensive media exposure. Previous research indicates that experiencing extreme weather events has the potential to heighten engagement with climate change, however the process by which this occurs remains largely unknown, and establishing a clear causal relationship from experience to perceptions is methodologically challenging. The UK winter flooding offered a natural experiment to examine this question in detail. We compare individuals personally affected by flooding (n = 162) to a nationally representative sample (n = 975). We show that direct experience of flooding leads to an overall increased salience of climate change, pronounced emotional responses and greater perceived personal vulnerability and risk perceptions. We also present the first evidence that direct flooding experience can give rise to behavioural intentions beyond individual sustainability actions, including support for mitigation policies, and personal climate adaptation in matters unrelated to the direct experience.",

author = "Christina Demski and Stuart Capstick and Nick Pidgeon and Sposato, {Robert Gennaro} and Alexa Spence",

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Experience of extreme weather affects climate change mitigation and adaptation responses

Abstract

Bibliographical note

ASJC Scopus subject areas

UN SDGs

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