Risk Perception and Willingness to Act
The Red Sea Net Project consists of two surveys. First, the project conducted a transnational survey of youth within seven countries to evaluate the perception of climate change as an active or impending factor in their everyday lives.
Second, the project conducted a transnational study on the impacts of climate change on agro-pastoral communities in seven countries. It surveyed smallholder farmers and pastoralists to examine the impacts of climate change on their livelihoods and their developing adaptation strategies and constraints.
While seemingly distinct, these two surveys address a key nexus of climate change adaptation. As ecological degradation forces increasing urbanization, the two surveyed demographics become increasingly intertwined. Moreover, the perceptions of educated urban youth will likely shape much of the national policy that attempts to address climate change within both populations during the coming decades. Investigating the vulnerability of the fragile agricultural systems of the region to climate change points towards comprehensive and successful future climate change adaptation plans. Understanding the affinities, discordances, and dynamics of these populations within and across target countries will help critically evaluate highly localized issues in the context of (trans)regional climate effects and transnational socio-commercial networks.
The youth perceptions of climate change and willingness to act models were modified after the work of van der Linden[1] and Xie et al. [2]. The models used six important predictor variables for risk perception and willingness to act in addition to socio-demographic information such as age, gender, education, and education level. In brief, the independent and dependent variables are explained below:
Population of each country in the Perceptions Survey. Map created by Moustapha Nour-Ayeh.
Model of the perception survey conducted by the RedSeaNet project.
Dependent Variables:
1. Risk perception
Risk perception was measured in two dimensions:
Personal risk perception: The participant’s judgment of how likely they will personally experience threats to their overall well-being as a result of climate change and how often.
Global risk perception: The participant’s judgment of how serious they would rate the current impacts of climate change around the world and how likely they consider that as a serious threat to their country and the natural environment.
2. Behavioral willingness
The behavioral willingness was measured in three dimensions:
Personal willingness: the participants’ willingness to engage personally in climate change mitigation behaviors.
Societal willingness: the participants’ willingness for their society to engage in climate change mitigation behaviors.
Advocacy willingness: the participants’ willingness to personally take advocacy actions.
Independent Variables:
1. Knowledge about climate change
The survey measured the knowledge about climate change in three dimensions: knowledge about causes, knowledge about impacts, and knowledge about mitigation responses. Each knowledge dimension was assessed using a response to randomly ordered correct and incorrect statements. The correctness of statements is based on scientific literature and pre-approval by academic climate scientists.
2. Holistic affect
The holistic affect is meant to indicate a more subtle form of emotion, defined as a positive (like) or negative (dislike) evaluative feeling towards climate change.
3. Personal experience
The survey measured personal experience in two dimensions:
Personal experience of extreme weather events: the frequency of personally witnessing extreme weather events.
Receiving education about climate change: either education courses or training workshops
4. Broad value orientations
The survey measured the importance of specific values as guiding principles in their lives. The values were classified into three dimensions:
Egoistic values (i.e., maximizing individual outcomes)
Socio-altruistic values (i.e., caring about others)
Biospheric values (i.e., caring for non-human nature and the biosphere itself).
5. Social norms
The survey measured the importance of social norms on participants’ decisions in two dimensions:
Descriptive norm: On a 7-point Likert scale, respondents answered three questions about how likely they think it is that important referent others are taking personal action to help tackle climate change.
Prescriptive norm: On a 7-point Likert scale, respondents answered four questions about the extent to which they feel socially pressured to personally help reduce the risk of climate change.
6. Mitigation Response Inefficacy
The survey measured the participants’ perception of the necessity and effectiveness of climate change mitigation actions.
[1] van der Linden, Sander. (2015). The Social-Psychological Determinants of Climate Change Risk Perceptions: Towards a Comprehensive Model, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 41: 112-24.
[2] Xie, Belinda, Marilynn B. Brewer, Brett K. Hayes, Rachel I. McDonald, and Ben R. Newell. (2019). Predicting Climate Change Risk Perception and Willingness to Act, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 65.
