Who are your people? – The effect of political ideology and social identity on climate-related beliefs and risk perceptions

Abstract

Persistent divides among American voters regarding climate change, especially climate skepticism among conservatives, have long been explained with reference to ideology, vested interests, and trends of political polarization. More recently, an alternative set of explanations for the opinion gap between conservatives and liberals has been gaining traction, arguing that these divisions are generated by social identities and their effects on individual beliefs and attitudes. Here, we focus on global citizenship as a specific social identity. Seeking to connect ideology and social identity approaches, we study how the interaction between a person’s ideological leanings and their social identity as a global citizen relates to beliefs and risk perceptions regarding climate change. Analyzing two kinds of survey data, we find that a global citizen identity moderates the relationship between a conservative ideology and a person’s climate-related beliefs and risk perceptions, while it does not seem to have the same effect for liberal individuals. In other words, a global citizen identity is associated with a potential decrease in the ideological divide between conservatives and liberals regarding climate change. We explore the implications of these findings for climate change communication and policy and other issue areas.