Consumers’ knowledge about climate change
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Author (Corporation)
Publication date
11.01.2012
Typ of student thesis
Course of study
Type
01A - Journal article
Editors
Editor (Corporation)
Supervisor
Parent work
Climatic Change
Special issue
DOI of the original publication
Link
Series
Series number
Volume
114
Issue / Number
Pages / Duration
189–209
Patent number
Publisher / Publishing institution
Springer
Place of publication / Event location
Berlin
Edition
Version
Programming language
Assignee
Practice partner / Client
Abstract
Several 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.
Keywords
Climate change, Environmental knowledge
Subject (DDC)
Event
Exhibition start date
Exhibition end date
Conference start date
Conference end date
Date of the last check
ISBN
ISSN
0165-0009
1573-1480
1573-1480
Language
English
Created during FHNW affiliation
No
Strategic action fields FHNW
Zero Emission
Publication status
Published
Review
Peer review of the complete publication
Open access category
Closed
License
Citation
Tobler, C., Visschers, V., & Siegrist, M. (2012). Consumers’ knowledge about climate change. Climatic Change, 114, 189–209. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-011-0393-1