The Ecology of Individuals’ Disposition for Climate Change Populism

Manifesting across three projects, the group analyzes how global liberal frameworks shape individuals’ climate beliefs, emotions, and behavioral intentions. The first project draws upon existing data collected by the International Social Survey Program (Environmental Module) to assess how nations' embeddedness within global liberal frameworks (e.g., linkages to liberal international organizations, treaties, standards, and top universities) impacts climate skepticism.  MLM analyses of longitudinal data from 37 nations show that overall embeddedness within global liberal frameworks is linked to lower skepticism. However, amidst anti-liberal pushback, the effect of global liberal forces varies. Although embeddedness mitigates climate skepticism nationally within authoritarian regimes, it cannot do so individually among right-wing individuals; in fact, embeddedness even heightens polarization of climate change views.This study contributes fresh insights to the growing body of literature concerning the “post-liberal” shift in world society by highlighting the contexts in which liberal norms (fail to) resist rising illiberal currents.

The second project entails a large-scale experimental survey in the Philippines, a country that displays the highest level of climate skepticism among ASEAN nations despite facing significant ecological risks, to gain further causal insights into how global liberal influences attenuate climate skepticism. The survey develops an original battery of survey questions to construct a composite Climate Skeptic Index (measuring both trends and attribution disbelief) to enhance the understanding of climate skepticism as a manifestation of anti-global, anti-liberal sentiments. For instance, one question tests whether support for pro-climate policy (carbon pricing) depends on the level of authority from which the policy originates (national, regional, or transnational). In another, we test whether framing climate change as a global vs. local environmental threat impacts one’s climate skeptic index score and their willingness to take climate action.  Further questions probe whether individual overconfidence, support for science populism, and non-Western framing of climate change, impact climate skeptic beliefs and pro-climate actions.

The third project (currently being developed) develops a new framework for thinking about climate beliefs manifesting as emotions to examine 1) how climate emotions are shaped by exposure to global cultural frameworks and 2) how these emotions influence individuals’ migration and reproduction intentions--two major population dynamics anticipated to be affected by climate change.  The project proposes a macro-sociological framework, positioning climate emotions and behavioral intentions not only as reactions to climate uncertainties and risks but also as shaped by global cultural forces promoting environmental norms and agentic and empowered individuals, who are expected to take their own climate futures in hand. The project will run a large-scale cross-national survey, with experimental questions.