Abstract
An emerging body of research proposes that climate change concern is shaped by one’s social ties and cultural milieu1,2,3. This work aligns with findings in the well-established field of social network analysis, whereby individuals are understood as being embedded in social networks, and network position can be used to predict attitudes4,5. Here we examine whether having ties to environmental movement organization members is correlated with climate change attitudes amongst the general public. We use data from a nationwide survey of the Canadian public to demonstrate that having social ties to environmental organization members increases the likelihood that an individual member of the public has a plan to deal with climate change. These findings reinforce the value of focusing on social context when examining climate change attitudes, and highlight the role that environmental organization members play in mobilizing climate change responses.
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Acknowledgements
Research for this paper was financially supported by several research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. G.P. received a fellowship from the Pacific Institute of Climate Solutions while working on this study. We would like to thank M. Stoddart, J. Robinson, T. Malinick and A. Streilein for their assistance with the survey of environmental organization members; and also R. Wilkes, N. Guppy, M. Diani, D. Fisher, S. Sheppard and J. Broadbent for their helpful advice on this project, and earlier versions of this paper. We would like to thank Venture Market Research Corporation—and, in particular, B. Killip and I. Darling—for their assistance with the survey of the general public.
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D.B.T. contributed to all aspects of this paper, including study design, data collection, statistical analysis and writing. G.P. contributed to statistical analysis and writing.
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Tindall, D., Piggot, G. Influence of social ties to environmentalists on public climate change perceptions. Nature Clim Change 5, 546–549 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2597
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2597
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