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1 School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand, 2 School of Psychology,
University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
* [email protected]
Abstract
Polls examining public opinion on the subject of climate change are now commonplace, and
one-off public opinion polls provide a snapshot of citizen’s opinions that can inform policy
and communication strategies. However, cross-sectional polls do not track opinions over
time, thus making it impossible to ascertain whether key climate change beliefs held by the
same group of individuals are changing or not. Here we examine the extent to which indivi-
dual’s level of agreement with two key beliefs (“climate change is real” and “climate change
is caused by humans”) remain stable or increase/decrease over a six-year period in New
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Zealand using latent growth curve modelling (n = 10,436). Data were drawn from the New
Zealand Attitudes and Values Study, a probabilistic national panel study, and indicated that
levels of agreement to both beliefs have steadily increased over the 2009–2015 period.
Given that climate change beliefs and concerns are key predictors of climate change action,
our findings suggest that a combination of targeted endeavors, as well as serendipitous
events, may successfully convey the emergency of the issue.
Introduction
In 2015, Pope Francis encouraged Catholics worldwide to be attentive to global climate change
in his encyclical Laudato si’. More recently, Leonardo DiCaprio was allowed a longer-than- average Oscar acceptance speech to similarly raise worldwide attention to climate change,
while leaders and representatives from over 150 countries gathered to sign the global climate
change agreement reached in Paris in December, 2015. One question that arises from these
international examples of public figures trying to promote awareness and action on climate
change is whether they reflect and/or influence a popular upswing in climate change beliefs
and concerns over time.
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Although perceptions of climate change threat and beliefs vary internationally [1], opinion
polls indicate that an overall global majority believe in the reality and human causation of cli-
mate change [2–4]. In particular, short-term longitudinal panel studies that have examined the
effect of factors such as popular media interventions or extreme weather events on climate
change concern suggest that individuals’ attitudes may change after exposure to such events.
For example, a field experiment investigating impacts of the provision of climate information
through TV meteorologists (presented on air and online) indicated that viewers were both
PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0174246 March 20, 2017 1 / 9