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 School of Geography and the Environment

Public responses to climate scenarios

Public Responses to Climate Change

How members of the public might respond to future climate change is without doubt a vital component of successful collective and individual adaption. However, as human futures are notoriously difficult to model en masse, one approach is to explore how individuals react now to projected climate futures: and to examine what these reactions may be able to tell us about future attitudes and behaviour.

The ‘Climate Change and the Public Sphere’ project—funded by the Australian Research Council—thus aims to explore if, and in what ways, members of the public from the Australian Capital Region alter their underlying dispositions and policy preferences when exposed to climate change information.

Specifically, the project tests the impact of different forms of interaction with climate change information. Initially, over 100 randomly selected members of the public have been interviewed and their responses to regional climate change scenarios mapped using Q Methodology; Policy Preferences and Willingness to Pay exercises; and qualitative data (view the scenarios). A sub-set of these 100 participants has subsequently participated in a 3-day deliberative process, to explore if outcomes are different when individuals have the chance to interact, debate with and learn from others.

Initial analysis suggests that participants moved in a more positive direction when taking part in deliberation, in terms of willingness to accept a broader suite of policy approaches and to become personally engaged: but not when viewing the scenarios in an interview setting. Such results raise yet more questions, currently being developed into future research ideas, such as:

  • Can the positive effects of deliberation be achieved without running multiple small group processes i.e. online?
  • How do policy makers and other socio-political actors view and make use of public engagement processes?
  • Which forms of climate change scepticism are amenable to engagement, and which are not?

For more information on this ongoing work, contact Dr. Kersty Hobson: kersty.hobson@ouce.ox.ac.uk

Outputs to date

  • Hobson, K., Niemeyer, S., (2011) Public responses to climate change: The role of deliberation in building capacity for adaptive action. Global Environmental Change, doi: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.05.001
  • Hobson, K., Niemeyer, S., (2011) ‘What sceptics believe’: the effects of information and deliberation on climate skepticism. Manuscript submitted to Public Understanding of Science: currently under review.
  • Hobson, K. (2009) On a governmentality analytics of the ‘deliberative turn’: material conditions, rationalities and the deliberating subject. Space and Polity 13(3): 175-191.