Climate Change Beliefs, Political Attitudes, and Media Use in the Netherlands

For decades, climate scientists have called for drastic and swift climate action based on cumulative and thorough scientific evidence that human activity drives climate change, highlighting that effects are irreversible and potentially life-threatening to tens of millions of people (IPCC, 2023). However, quick and all-encompassing political action is still lacking, at least partly due to politicization of the issue (McCright & Dunlap, 2011). Narratives about climate change and its solutions to deal with it might have become more political. This signals that not all voters see the full urgency of the climate change crisis, and therefore differ strongly on how to deal with climate change. Some analyses point to the fact that there are different climate discourses present in the population, with citizens having different perceptions of, and different information sources about, the climate crisis (Leichenko & O’Brien, 2024). These discourses might have been informed by a different type of media consumption, for instance, by social media. On social media, the prevalence of misinformation about climate change might be larger. (Treen et al., 2020). To get better insights into discourses, it has been argued that we need more knowledge on the existence of types of solutions preferred by different citizens. This will help us to further understand climate change scepticism (Leiserowitz et al., 2021). We study which groups exist in the Dutch population based on climate change beliefs and support for solutions, and how these groups differ in their political characteristics and media use. Using a latent profile analysis (LPA) clustering approach (N = 3,003), we distinguished four different climate change segments. These segments are based on an original questionnaire that measures support for various types of climate change policies and attitudes on climate change. The segments range from sceptic (10%) to alarmed (40%). Those in the sceptic segment do not deny the existence human-caused climate change, but they think that other issues are more pressing and that climate change gets too much attention. Therefore, they do not support most climate policies. In contrast, those in the alarmed segment are most worried about climate change, think it is the most pressing issue in modern politics and society, and support nearly all climate policies, no matter whether the policy is focused on technological solutions or restrictions based on behaviour by the government. The nature-centric (18%) and indifferent (32%), range in between. They acknowledge the urgency of the climate change crisis and have support for specific types of climate policies. The segments align with self-reported left-right ideology scores and education level, with the alarmed segment being the most left-wing and the most educated. More importantly, and crucially, the segments significantly differ in their media consumption. It is therefore likely that they are also exposed to different information on climate change. The alarmed citizens rely mostly on quality newspapers and public broadcast television, while the more sceptic citizens rely mostly on commercial television and social media. Furthermore, the sceptic segment uses Facebook and X more for news than any other segment.