SRA-E Lisbon 2017

The European Perceptions of Climate Change (EPCC) project is a major risk perceptions study supported by the Joint Programme Initiative on Climate Change (JPI-Climate). In this symposium we will bring together leading risk perception researchers representing the four European institutes involved in designing and conducting the EPCC survey (the Universities of Cardiff, Stuttgart, Bergen, the Rokkan Centre in Norway and Symlog Institute in Paris) to discuss different findings from this project. Each author in this symposium will present a different facet and analysis of the data gathered. Although we now have considerable evidence on public climate risk perceptions from multiple individual in-nation studies stretching back some 30 years, there is far less good quality comparative and cross-cultural data on how perceptions and their antecedents vary across different countries. Data collection for the EPCC survey of climate and energy risk perceptions took place in four European countries in June 2016 with a total sample size of 1000 nationally representative respondents collected in each of Great Britain, Germany, Norway and France using a multi-item survey instrument. The value of such a comparative approach is that important cross-nation differences in e.g. climate scepticism, the psychological distance of climate change risk, and political orientation can be explored together with key aspects of national cultural and energy systems contexts that might influence both climate risk perceptions and people’s preferences for energy and other policy responses.