Meta-Analysis of Similarities and Differences in Effects of Theoretical Drivers Across Climate Change Attitudes, Behaviors and Policy Support

Within the growing field of cross-national climate change attitudes and behavioral research, the literature has largely focused on beliefs and concerns, and to a smaller extent, behaviors or policy support. This is largely due to the items present in publically available survey data. But, as of yet, very few studies differentiate how the effects of the most prominent theoretical drivers (i.e. political attitudes, socio-demographics, trust, risk perception) could change depending on the type of climate change attitude or behavior. Rather, these are assumed to broadly affect each form of attitude and behavior similarly. For this paper, I conduct a meta-analysis of recent cross-national survey based studies of climate change attitudes and behaviors. I find significant differences based upon key drivers, in particular the role of political attitudes, which are most effective in shaping concerns and policy preferences towards climate change, but largely insignificant with regards to individual behaviors. While other antecedent indicators, such as socio-demographics and risk perception, remain more stable across the varied types of dependent variables. These results suggest further attention be paid to not only the relationships between key drivers and climate change attitudes and behaviors, but also between specific types of these attitudes and behaviors.