Cargando…
The Effect of Information Provision on Public Consensus about Climate Change
Despite over 20 years of research and scientific consensus on the topic, climate change continues to be a politically polarizing issue. We conducted a survey experiment to test whether providing the public with information on the exact extent of scientific agreement about the occurrence and causes o...
Autores principales: | , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2016
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4827814/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27064486 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0151469 |
_version_ | 1782426514764070912 |
---|---|
author | Deryugina, Tatyana Shurchkov, Olga |
author_facet | Deryugina, Tatyana Shurchkov, Olga |
author_sort | Deryugina, Tatyana |
collection | PubMed |
description | Despite over 20 years of research and scientific consensus on the topic, climate change continues to be a politically polarizing issue. We conducted a survey experiment to test whether providing the public with information on the exact extent of scientific agreement about the occurrence and causes of climate change affects respondents’ own beliefs and bridges the divide between conservatives and liberals. First, we show that the public significantly underestimated the extent of the scientific consensus. We then find that those given concrete information about scientists’ views were more likely to report believing that climate change was already underway and that it was caused by humans. However, their beliefs about the necessity of making policy decisions and their willingness to donate money to combat climate change were not affected. Information provision affected liberals, moderates, and conservatives similarly, implying that the gap in beliefs between liberals and conservatives is not likely to be bridged by information treatments similar to the one we study. Finally, we conducted a 6-month follow-up with respondents to see if the treatment effect persisted; the results were statistically inconclusive. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4827814 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-48278142016-04-22 The Effect of Information Provision on Public Consensus about Climate Change Deryugina, Tatyana Shurchkov, Olga PLoS One Research Article Despite over 20 years of research and scientific consensus on the topic, climate change continues to be a politically polarizing issue. We conducted a survey experiment to test whether providing the public with information on the exact extent of scientific agreement about the occurrence and causes of climate change affects respondents’ own beliefs and bridges the divide between conservatives and liberals. First, we show that the public significantly underestimated the extent of the scientific consensus. We then find that those given concrete information about scientists’ views were more likely to report believing that climate change was already underway and that it was caused by humans. However, their beliefs about the necessity of making policy decisions and their willingness to donate money to combat climate change were not affected. Information provision affected liberals, moderates, and conservatives similarly, implying that the gap in beliefs between liberals and conservatives is not likely to be bridged by information treatments similar to the one we study. Finally, we conducted a 6-month follow-up with respondents to see if the treatment effect persisted; the results were statistically inconclusive. Public Library of Science 2016-04-11 /pmc/articles/PMC4827814/ /pubmed/27064486 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0151469 Text en © 2016 Deryugina, Shurchkov http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Deryugina, Tatyana Shurchkov, Olga The Effect of Information Provision on Public Consensus about Climate Change |
title | The Effect of Information Provision on Public Consensus about Climate Change |
title_full | The Effect of Information Provision on Public Consensus about Climate Change |
title_fullStr | The Effect of Information Provision on Public Consensus about Climate Change |
title_full_unstemmed | The Effect of Information Provision on Public Consensus about Climate Change |
title_short | The Effect of Information Provision on Public Consensus about Climate Change |
title_sort | effect of information provision on public consensus about climate change |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4827814/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27064486 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0151469 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT deryuginatatyana theeffectofinformationprovisiononpublicconsensusaboutclimatechange AT shurchkovolga theeffectofinformationprovisiononpublicconsensusaboutclimatechange AT deryuginatatyana effectofinformationprovisiononpublicconsensusaboutclimatechange AT shurchkovolga effectofinformationprovisiononpublicconsensusaboutclimatechange |