Who are the climate change skeptics? Climate change skepticism and its relationship to right wing populism in Austria

Description

Climate change represents one of the greatest threats worldwide. Due to its urgency and the social movements demanding stronger actions, it got increasing attention during the last years. Despite the extensive scientific evidence, there are people who deny or are at least skeptical about its anthropogenic origin. Previous research indicates that climate change sceptics are mainly located in the political right-wing spectrum. However, these studies were mostly conducted in Anglo-Saxon countries. To broaden this research beyond that context, we explored the relationship in a central European country, namely Austria. We assessed the relationship between climate change skepticism, political orientation, further predictors as well as potential explanation models. We found that people express most climate change skepticism when holding a political right-wing worldview, supporting right-wing values, and declining environmental values. Furthermore, we investigated the impact of several (sociodemographic) factors and revealed that beside political orientation, higher age, being male, lower education, and living in rural areas or villages are (strong) predictors for climate change skepticism. Overall, political orientation remains the strongest predictor. Since we conducted the study during the Covid19 pandemic, we furthermore examined and confirmed a correlation between the believe in Covid19 conspiracy theories and climate change skepticism. We discuss the potential implication of the general monological tendency to believe in conspiracy theories on climate change skepticism.

Period	6 Oct 2021
Event title	International Conference on Environmental Psychology
Event type	Conference
Location	Sirakusa, ItalyShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International