Climate Change and Technology: Examining Opinion Formation and Risk Perceptions of Geoengineering

• In Event: ICA Plenary Interactive Paper/Poster Session II
  In Interactive Paper Session: Environmental Communication Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

In recent years, ‘climate change’ has matured from a technical term employed by scientists and policy-makers to a social, political, and moral locus that has garnered widespread media coverage, public interest, and debate around the world. As evidence demonstrating the anthropogenic influence on the Earth’s climate has steadily grown stronger, climate change has come to be seen as a pre-eminent challenge of the 21st century. Until recently, most discourse regarding potential responses to anthropogenic climate change have focused on two categories of response options 1) emission mitigation (reducing greenhouse gas emissions), and 2) human adaptation to a changing world (Mercer, Keith and Sharp, 2011). Geoengineering, a set of proposed large-scale technological fixes to reduce or neutralize greenhouse gas emissions, is a third emerging category of response to global climate change. This study seeks to understand which factors contribute, or alternatively, subtract from public acceptance of geoengineering through predictive hierarchical OLS regression modelling of public perceptions of a variety of factors including socio-demographics, value predispositions, and media use. Such predictive modelling can enable risk communicators and policy-makers with vital information to improve future public engagement and communication about geoengineering.

Author

• Christopher Cummings, Nanyang Technological University