Abstract from 1998 SRA Annual Meeting Abstract of Meeting Paper Society for Risk Analysis 1998 Annual Meeting Risk Perceptions, Environmental Values, and Willingness to Address Climate Change . The research examines the relationship between risk perceptions and willingness to address climate change. The data are a national sample of 1,225 mail surveys that include measures of risk perceptions and knowledge tied to climate change, support for voluntary and government actions to address the problem, environmental values, and demographic variables.
Risk perceptions matter in predicting behavioral intentions.
Risk perceptions are not a surrogate for environmental values, but have their own power to account for behavioral intentions. There are four secondary conclusions. First, behavioral intentions regarding climate change are complex and intriguing. Second, there are separate demographic and attitudinal sources for voluntary actions compared with voting intentions. Third, recognizing the causes of global warming is a powerful predictor of behavioral intentions independent from believing that climate change will happen and have bad consequences.