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A representative survey experiment of motivated climate change denial

Nature Climate Change volume 14, pages 198–204 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Climate change is arguably one of the greatest challenges today. Although the scientific consensus is that human activities caused climate change, a substantial part of the population downplays or denies human responsibility. In this registered report, we present causal evidence on a potential explanation for this discrepancy: motivated reasoning. We conducted a tailored survey experiment on a broadly representative sample of 4,000 US adults to provide causal evidence on how motivated cognition shapes beliefs about climate change and influences the demand for slanted information. We further explore the role of motives on environmentally harmful behaviour. Contrary to our hypotheses, we find no evidence that motivated cognition can help to explain widespread climate change denial and environmentally harmful behaviour.

protocol registration The Stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 10 May 2023. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.24523357.v1.

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Fig. 1: Distribution of beliefs about climate change.
Fig. 2: Estimated average treatment effects for three comparisons.
Fig. 3: Estimated heterogeneous treatment effects for three comparisons (median split income).

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Data availability

All data and materials are openly available on the Open Science Framework (OSF) website at this link: https://osf.io/etsf2/.

Code availability

All analysis code (completed in STATA) are openly available on the Open Science Framework (OSF) website at this link: https://osf.io/etsf2/.

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Acknowledgements

Funding was by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy - EXC 2126/1 - 390838866. Funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) through CRC TR 224 (Project A01) is gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IZA, Bonn, Germany

    Lasse S. Stoetzer & Florian Zimmermann

  2. Department of Economics, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

    Florian Zimmermann

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Contributions

All authors contributed to the paper equally. L.S.S. and F.Z. both formalized and contributed to the research goals, designed the survey experiment and prepared the manuscript with feedback from each other. L.S.S. conducted the power analysis in consultation with F.Z., and F.Z. developed the outcome measures in consultation with L.S.S. L.S.S and F.Z. contributed to data collection, analysed the data and reviewed and approved the final manuscript together.

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Correspondence to Florian Zimmermann.

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Nature Climate Change thanks James Druckman and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–4, Tables 1–26 and Discussions.

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Stoetzer, L.S., Zimmermann, F. A representative survey experiment of motivated climate change denial. Nat. Clim. Chang. 14, 198–204 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01910-2

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