A Change in Climate Change Attitudes (and Behavior)?

Abstract

The successful negotiations of the Paris accords and recent US withdrawal; large sea-shelfs breaking off Antarctica; the USA effectively sending two delegations with very different points of view to the COP23 negotiations; Chinese and Indian mega-cities hidden in smog; the small Pacific island states begging for help in light of rising sea levels; industrial countries banning gas and diesel cars within the next 15 years; disruptive shifts to green energy production; floods, hurricanes and wild fires devastating densely populated areas all around the world - a lot has been going on in environmental and climate change politics in the last few years. But how have these events influenced climate change attitudes and behaviors amongst the populous, as well as amongst parties and politicians? Can we observing a rise in pro-environmental attitudes or of climate skepticism? Where we are able to observe changes in attitudes and behaviors, what are the drivers? Do changes in attitudes lead to corresponding changes in behavior? Are parties being responsive to these attitudinal shifts? Do we observe differences between countries or areas of the world? This panel invites papers that deal with the questions formulated above from an empirical as well as more theoretical point of view. We invite single-country studies as well as papers employing a more comparative approach, either covering contemporary analyses or over longer time periods.