Framing Effects on Climate Attitudes: The Salience of Extreme Weather Events and the Concern-Policy Support Gap.

This research addresses one of the most significant challenges for climate action in contemporary democracies: the "concern-policy support gap." This phenomenon describes the persistent disconnection between high levels of public concern over climate change and the limited willingness to support mitigation policies. While previous literature has analyzed the impact of extreme weather events in an aggregate manner, this study proposes that the political effect of such events is not uniform but depends on their "public salience." Theoretically, I develop a taxonomy that differentiates climatic events based on their visibility, the clarity of responsibility attribution, and the perceived magnitude of damage. I argue that "high-salience" events (such as torrential floods) activate a framework of state functional responsibility and a perception of material urgency that "low-salience" events (such as heatwaves) fail to mobilize, as the latter are often subject to cognitive normalization biases. To test this theory, I employ a framing survey experimental design based on a representative sample in Spain. The experiment manipulates participants' cognitive activation through different frames evoking specific extreme weather events. The research is structured around four primary hypotheses: 1) High-salience events increase support for mitigation measures; 2) Low-salience events only raise abstract concern without mobilizing political support; 3) Exposure to high-salience events significantly reduces the gap between concern and support; and 4) The impact of high salience is powerful enough to erode public resistance even toward high-cost policies (taxation and regulation). By focusing on the mechanism of salience and the nature of the event, this study contributes to the literature on climate attitudes and public opinion, providing evidence on how the experience (or memory) of climate disasters redefines the legitimacy of the ecological transition and the formation of citizen preferences in the face of existential crises.