BACKGROUND The UK government’s Climate Change Risk Assessment projects that climate change will lead to a range of impacts. The national adaptation plan envisions an active role for individuals and communities in reducing the harms, and taking advantage of the opportunities a changing climate presents. However, work in behavioural decision science demonstrates that formal risk assessments do not always align with the expectations and priorities of the wider public. In this paper we addressed three research questions: 1) What are UK residents’ expectations and priorities with respect to climate change impacts? 2) How do UK residents’ expectations of potential climate change impacts compare to expert assessments? 3) What are the predictors of willingness to allocate resources to specific impacts?
METHODOLOGY We conducted a secondary analysis of a UK national survey (n=2007) conducted in winter 2013.Participants were each randomly assigned to 10 out of 19 climate change impacts. For each, they rated the perceived likelihood of each occurring by 2050 (1=not at all likely, 5=very likely), their anticipated concern should they occur (1=not concerned at all, 4=very concerned), and their willingness to allocate resources (allocating 15 tokens amongst impacts). Additionally, climate change belief was measures using a three item scale. Expert assessments of impacts are drawn from the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment.
RESULTS Our analysis yielded three main findings. First, we observed that UK residents tended to prioritise threats related to flooding, water security and food security more highly than opportunities or threats related to heat extremes. Second, expectations of climate change impacts did not consistently align with expert assessments, especially showing lower estimates of heat-related threats as compared to experts. Third, willingness to allocate resources to climate change impacts was more strongly associated with anticipated concern should they occur, than climate change belief or expected likelihood.
CONCLUSIONS Our findings suggest that UK residents may underestimate the threat posed by projected increases in heat extremes, and thus be less prepared to support measures to prepare for these threats. They also suggest that willingness to support specific adaptation measures may more strongly linked to concern about the magnitude of specific impacts, rather than their likelihood of occurring, or more general concern about climate change. One important practical implication of this is that communications promoting adaptation to specific threats may be more successful if they focus on the potential consequences of these impacts, rather than on climate change in a broader sense.