Institut für Marktangebote und Konsumentscheidungen
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Ergebnisse nach Hochschule und Institut
Publikation Consumers’ knowledge about climate change(Springer, 11.01.2012) Tobler, Christina; Visschers, Vivianne; Siegrist, MichaelSeveral studies have unveiled various misconceptions about climate change that the public holds, for instance, confusion about climate change and ozone depletion. However, so far, there has been no uniform and standardized way to measure climate-related knowledge, which complicates comparisons between different countries or samples. To develop an extensive knowledge scale, we therefore examined the Swiss public’s understanding of climate change in a mail survey and related this scale to attitudes toward climate change. We thereby aimed to consider a broad range of climate-related knowledge, namely physical knowledge about CO2 and the greenhouse effect, knowledge about climate change and its causes, knowledge about the expected consequences of climate change, and action-related knowledge. The questionnaire included items of different degrees of difficulty, ranging from knowledge that is covered by newspapers to experts’ knowledge. Our findings indicate that people still hold several misconceptions, although people’s knowledge related to CO2 seems to have increased compared to previous studies. Of all knowledge subscales, knowledge about climate change and causes was most strongly related to attitudes toward climate change.01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher ZeitschriftPublikation Addressing climate change: Determinants of consumers' willingness to act and to support policy measures(Elsevier, 09/2012) Tobler, Christina; Visschers, Vivianne; Siegrist, MichaelConsumers influence climate change through their consumption patterns and their support or dismissal of climate mitigation policy measures. Both climate-friendly actions and policy support comprise a broad range of options, which vary in manifold ways and, therefore, might be influenced by different factors. The aims of the study were, therefore, two-fold: first, we intended to find a meaningful way to classify different ways of addressing climate change. Second, we aimed to examine which determinants influence people's willingness to engage in these behaviors. We conducted a large-scale mail survey in Switzerland in which respondents rated, among other items, their willingness to act or support a range of possible actions and mitigations measures. A principal component analysis indicated that a distinction in terms of a behavior's directness as well as a differentiation according to perceived costs seem to be appropriate to classify climate-friendly actions. Multiple regression analyses showed that perceived costs and perceived climate benefit turned out to be the strongest predictors for willingness to act or to support climate policy measures. The strong influence of perceived climate benefit might reflect a strategy of reducing cognitive dissonance. As high-cost behaviors are more difficult to adopt, consumers may reduce dissonance by dismissing high-cost behaviors as not effective in terms of climate mitigation. Political affiliation proved to be another strong determinant of willingness to act or support. Participants on the right wing were less willing to show indirect climate-friendly behaviors, change their mobility behaviors, and to support any type of climate mitigation policy measures. Climate-friendly low-cost behaviors, however, were not influenced by political affiliation.01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher ZeitschriftPublikation Knowledge as a driver of public perceptions about climate change reassessed(Nature, 2016) Shi, Jing; Visschers, Vivianne; Siegrist, Michael; Arvai, JosephIt is intuitive to assume that concern about climate change should be preceded by knowledge about its effects. However, recent research suggests that knowledge about climate change has only a limited effect on shaping concern about climate change. Our view is that this counterintuitive finding is a function of how knowledge is typically measured in studies about climate change. We find that if it is measured in a domain-specific and multidimensional way, knowledge is indeed an important driver of concern about climate change—even when we control for human values. Likewise, different dimensions of knowledge play different roles in shaping concern about climate change. To illustrate these findings, we present the results from a survey deployed across six culturally and politically diverse countries. Higher levels of knowledge about the causes of climate change were related to a heightened concern. However, higher levels of knowledge about the physical characteristics of climate change had either a negative or no significant effect on concern. Efforts aimed at improving public knowledge about climate change are therefore not the lost cause that some researchers claim they may be.01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher Zeitschrift