Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Article
  • Published:

The effect of public safety power shut-offs on climate change attitudes and behavioural intentions

Nature Energy volume 7, pages 736–743 (2022)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

As climate change accelerates, governments will be forced to adapt to its impacts. The public could respond by increasing mitigation behaviours and support for decarbonization, creating a virtuous cycle between adaptation and mitigation. Alternatively, adaptation could generate backlash, undermining mitigation behaviours. Here we examine the relationship between adaptation and mitigation in the power sector, using the case of California’s public safety power shut-offs in 2019. We use a geographically targeted survey to compare residents living within power outage zones to matched residents in similar neighbourhoods who retained their electricity. Outage exposure increased respondent intentions to purchase fossil fuel generators while it may have reduced intentions to purchase electric vehicles. However, exposure did not change climate policy preferences, including willingness to pay for either wildfire or climate-mitigating reforms. Respondents blamed outages on their utility, not local, state or federal governments. Our findings demonstrate that energy infrastructure disruptions, even when not understood as climate adaptations, can still be consequential for decarbonization trajectories.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Survey sampling zones associated with PSPS events in Northern California in fall 2019.
Fig. 2: Level of concern reported by outage-impacted respondents associated with fall 2019 PSPS events in Northern California.
Fig. 3: Effect of outage exposure on policy and climate change attitudes.
Fig. 4: Effect of outage exposure on household-level adaptation and purchasing intentions.
Fig. 5: Heterogeneous effects of outage exposure on adaptation by respondent acceptance that global warming is caused mostly by human activities.
Fig. 6: Effect of outage exposure on attitudes towards utilities.
Fig. 7: Effect of outage exposure on politician approval ratings.

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

The underlying data used in this article has been deposited in a Harvard Dataverse repository to accompany publication of this article, available at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/UUYMNG.

Code availability

The code and replication scripts necessary to generate the figures, tables and analysis reported here have also been been deposited in the Harvard Dataverse repository at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/UUYMNG.

References

  1. Reidmiller, D. R. et al. in Fourth National Climate Assessment. Vol. II: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States (US Global Change Research Program, 2019).

  2. Abatzoglou, J. T., Smith, C. M., Swain, D. L., Ptak, T. & Kolden, C. A. Population exposure to pre-emptive de-energization aimed at averting wildfires in Northern California. Environ. Res. Lett. 15, 094046 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Berrang-Ford, L. et al. A systematic global stocktake of evidence on human adaptation to climate change. Nat. Clim. Change 11, 989–1000 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Howe, P. D., Marlon, J. R., Mildenberger, M. & Shield, B. S. How will climate change shape climate opinion? Environ. Res. Lett. 14, 113001 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Egan, P. J. & Mullin, M. Turning personal experience into political attitudes: the effect of local weather on Americansʼ perceptions about global warming. J. Polit. 74, 796–809 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Zaval, L., Keenan, E. A., Johnson, E. J. & Weber, E. U. How warm days increase belief in global warming. Nat. Clim. Change 4, 143–147 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Bergquist, P. & Warshaw, C. Does global warming increase public concern about climate change? J. Polit. 81, 686–691 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Hamilton, L. C. et al. Wildfire, climate, and perceptions in northeast Oregon. Reg. Environ. Change 16, 1819–1832 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Hazlett, C. & Mildenberger, M. Wildfire exposure increases pro-environment voting within Democratic but not Republican areas. Am. Polit. Sci. Rev. 114, 1359–1365 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Shao, W. & Goidel, K. Seeing is believing? An examination of perceptions of local weather conditions and climate change among residents in the US Gulf Coast. Risk Anal. 36, 2136–2157 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Spence, A., Poortinga, W., Butler, C. & Pidgeon, NicholasFrank Perceptions of climate change and willingness to save energy related to flood experience. Nat. Clim. Change 1, 46–49 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Demski, C., Capstick, S., Pidgeon, N., Sposato, R. G. & Spence, A. Experience of extreme weather affects climate change mitigation and adaptation responses. Climatic Change 140, 149–164 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Albright, E. A. & Crow, D. Beliefs about climate change in the aftermath of extreme flooding. Climatic Change 155, 1–17 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Stokes, L. C. Electoral backlash against climate policy: a natural experiment on retrospective voting and local resistance to public policy. Am. J. Polit. Sci. 60, 958–974 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Carattini, S., Carvalho, M. & Fankhauser, S. Overcoming public resistance to carbon taxes. Wiley Interdiscip. Rev. Clim. Change 9, e531 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Mildenberger, M., Lachapelle, E., Harrison, K. & Stadelmann-Steffen, I. Limited impacts of carbon tax rebate programs on public support for carbon pricing. Nat. Clim. Change 12, 141–147 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Levy, M. A., Lubell, M. N. & McRoberts, N. The structure of mental models of sustainable agriculture. Nat. Sustain. 1, 413–420 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Gonzalez, P. et al. in Fourth National Climate Assessment. Vol. II: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States Ch. 25 (US Global Change Research Program, 2018).

  19. Ghanem, D. A., Mander, S. & Gough, C. I think we need to get a better generator: household resilience to disruption to power supply during storm events. Energy Policy 92, 171–180 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Rubin, G. J. & Rogers, M. B. Behavioural and psychological responses of the public during a major power outage: a literature review. Int. J. Disaster Risk Reduct. 38, 101226 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Spence, A., Leygue, C. & Andeane, P. O. Sustainability following adversity: power outage experiences are related to greater energy saving intentions in the United Kingdom and Mexico. Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 79, 102143 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Zanocco, C., Flora, J., Rajagopal, R. & Boudet, H. When the lights go out: Californiansʼ experience with wildfire-related public safety power shutoffs increases intention to adopt solar and storage. Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 79, 102183 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Wong-Parodi, G. When climate change adaptation becomes a looming threat to society: exploring views and responses to California wildfires and public safety power shutoffs. Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 70, 101757 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Amended PG&E Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) Report to the CPUC, October 9–12, 2019 De-Energization Event (PG&E, 2019).

  25. PG&E Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) Report to the CPUC October 23–25, 2019 De-Energization Event (PG&E, 2019).

  26. PG&E Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) Report to the CPUC October 26 & 29, 2019 De-Energization Event (PG&E, 2019).

  27. Lerman, A. E. & Trachtman, S. Where policies and politics diverge: awareness, assessments, and attribution in the ACA. Public Opin. Q. 84, 419–445 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Kahle, D. & Wickham, H. ggmap: spatial visualization with ggplot2. R. J. 5, 144–161 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Diamond, A. & Sekhon, J. Genetic matching for estimating causal effects: a general multivariate matching method for achieving balance in observational studies. Rev. Econ. Stat. 95, 932–945 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Keele, L. & Titiunik, R. Geographic boundaries as regression discontinuities. Polit. Anal. 23, 127–155 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research was supported in part by funding from the Research Council of Norway as part of DEMOS grant 302869 (L.C.S.), the Swedish Formas Research Council grant 2019-01962 (L.C.S.), and the US National Science Foundation as part of both grant BCS-1753082 (P.D.H.) and grant CRISP-1541056 (M.L.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. We also thank J. Marlon, P. Bergquist, A. Cooperman, S. Constantino and O.M. Lægreid for comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Matto Mildenberger & Leah C. Stokes

  2. Quinney College of Natural Resources, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA

    Peter D. Howe

  3. Department of Political Science, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Samuel Trachtman

  4. Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA

    Mark Lubell

Authors
  1. Matto Mildenberger
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Peter D. Howe
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Samuel Trachtman
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Leah C. Stokes
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Mark Lubell
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

M.M. and P.D.H. jointly participated in all stages of this study, including design, data collection, analysis and writing. S.T. participated in analysis and writing. L.C.S. and M.L. participated in design, data collection and writing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Matto Mildenberger.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethics statement

This study was reviewed and approved by the University of California Office of Research as Protocol 22-19-0808. Respondent participation in our survey was voluntary, and respondents provided informed consent before taking the survey.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Energy thanks Fedor Dokshin, Alexa Spence and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Mildenberger, M., Howe, P.D., Trachtman, S. et al. The effect of public safety power shut-offs on climate change attitudes and behavioural intentions. Nat Energy 7, 736–743 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-022-01071-0

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-022-01071-0

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing