Chenyang Xiao

Perceived scientific agreement and support for government action on climate change in the USA

Given the well-documented campaign in the USA to deny the reality and seriousness of anthropogenic climate change (a major goal of which is to “manufacture uncertainty” in the minds of policy-makers and the general public), we examine the influence that perception of the scientific agreement on global warming has on the public’s beliefs about global warming and support for government action to reduce emissions. A recent study by Ding et al. (Nat Clim Chang 1:462–466, 2011) using nationally representative survey data from 2010 finds that misperception of scientific agreement among climate scientists is associated with lower levels of support for climate policy and beliefs that action should be taken to deal with global warming. Our study replicates and extends Ding et al. (Nat Clim Chang 1:462–466, 2011) using nationally representative survey data from March 2012. We generally confirm their findings, suggesting that the crucial role of perceived scientific agreement on views of global warming and support for climate policy is robust. Further, we show that political orientation has a significant influence on perceived scientific agreement, global warming beliefs, and support for government action to reduce emissions. Our results suggest the importance of improving public perception of the scientific agreement on global warming, but in ways that do not trigger or aggravate ideological or partisan divisions.

Political polarization on support for government spending on environmental protection in the USA, 1974-2012.

Since the early 1990s, the American conservative movement has become increasingly hostile toward environmental protection and Congressional Republicans have become increasingly anti-environmental in their voting records. Party sorting theory holds that such political polarization among elites will likely extend to the general public. Analyzing General Social Survey data from 1974 to 2012, we examine whether political polarization has occurred on support for government spending on environmental protection over this time period in the US general public. We find that there has been significant partisan and ideological polarization on support for environmental spending since 1992-consistent with the expectations of party sorting theory. This political polarization on environmental concern in the general public will likely endure save for political convergence on environmental concern among elites in the near future. Such polarization likely will inhibit the further development and implementation of environmental policy and the diffusion of environmentally friendly behaviors.

Explaining Gender Differences in Concern about Environmental Problems in the United States

We examine theoretical arguments explaining gender differences in environmental concern using data from six Gallup surveys in the 2000s. Using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling, we examine the direct and indirect effects of gender and other key variables on two factors of environmental concern: worry about health-related environmental problems and worry about global environmental problems. We find weak but consistent support for the safety concerns hypothesis, which expects that women are more concerned than are men about health-related environmental problems. Our results offer no support for various arguments that mens and womens differential performance of key social roles in society account for gender differences in environmental concern. We find consistent support for the claim that risk perception mediates the direct effect of gender on environmental concern. We end with a discussion of fruitful avenues for future research on gender differences in environmental concern.

Gender Differences in Environmental Concern: Revisiting the Institutional Trust Hypothesis in the USA

Research on environmental concern has consistently found that women have modestly stronger pro-environmental values, beliefs, and attitudes than do men. Scholars have proposed and examined several explanations and have found that only a few hypotheses receive somewhat consistent empirical support, including the institutional trust hypothesis. Given that recent research suggests that men and women have equivalent levels of trust in social institutions, we chose to revisit the institutional trust hypothesis. We use a structural equation modeling technique on General Social Survey data from 2000 and 2010. In both years, we found that women report greater pro-environmental views and concern about environmental problems than do men. Yet, we found only minimal gender differences in institutional trust and no evidence that institutional trust mediates the relationship between gender and environmental concern. Our study does not support the institutional trust hypothesis. We end by identifying potential implications of our findings and suggestions for future research.

Increasing Influence of Party Identification on Perceived Scientific Agreement and Support for Government Action on Climate Change in the United States, 2006-12

AbstractSince the mid-2000s, U.S. conservative leaders and Republican politicians have stepped up efforts to challenge the reality and seriousness of anthropogenic climate change (ACC). Especially with the rise of the Tea Party in 2009, ACC denial has become something of a litmus test for Republican politicians to prove their conservative bona fides. Two recent studies find that misperception of scientific agreement on ACC is associated with lower levels of support for government action to deal with ACC. Using nationally representative survey data from 2006 and 2012, the analytical model developed in those two studies was applied to investigate whether the effect of political orientation on perceived scientific agreement and support for government action to reduce emissions has increased since the heightened ACC denial by Republican politicians beginning in 2009. The results indicated that political ideology and party identification are moderately strong predictors of perceived scientific agreement; belie...

A Test of the Biographical Availability Argument for Gender Differences in Environmental Behaviors

Compared with men, women often express stronger proenvironmental attitudes and values and more frequently engage in private environmental behaviors (e.g., recycling), but not in public environmental behaviors (e.g., joining a protest about an environmental issue). This study uses the 2010 General Social Survey data to test whether this pattern is driven by the differing biographical availability of men and women. Do women’s time constraining commitments, such as having a paid job, living in multi-adult households, or parenting, relate to fewer public environmental behaviors but not fewer private behaviors? Results show that living with other adults while parenting increases the odds that a woman rather than a man performs no public behavior, but having a paid job does not. Living with other adults and not having a paid job also increase women’s participation in private behaviors. This study offers partial support for the biographical availability thesis, while also discovering a link between biographical availability and private environmental behaviors.

Green Christians? An Empirical Examination of Environmental Concern Within the U.S. General Public

Since the mid-1960s, many scholars have characterized Western Christianity as at odds with environmentalism and ecological values. Yet since the mid-1990s, many observers claim there has been a “greening of Christianity” in the United States. Using nationally representative data from the 2010 General Social Survey, we analyzed how pro-environmental self-identified Christians in the U.S. general public are in their self-reported environmental attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Using structural equation modeling, we find that self-identified Christians report lower levels of environmental concern than do non-Christians. Among Christians, religiosity relates positively to pro-environmental behaviors but not to pro-environmental attitudes or beliefs. These results suggest that this presumed greening of Christianity has not yet translated into a significant greening of pro-environmental attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of rank-and-file Christians in the U.S. general public.

Gender and Environmental Concern: Insights from Recent Work and for Future Research

Research on environmental concern in the past few decades consistently finds that women express slightly greater environmental concern than men. This pattern is robust across samples, nations, time, and facets of environmental concern measured. In a recent suite of articles analyzing data from a few nationally representative data sets for the U.S. general public, we examine explanations for gender differences in environmental concern derived from gender socialization theory. We explain our key findings here, before providing five insights for supporting a comprehensive research agenda on gender and environmental concern. These range from specific suggestions on conceptual measurement and analytical techniques to more general ones for improving our social science data infrastructure.

Gender and Concern for Environmental Issues in Urban China

Little research exists on Chinese peoples environmental concern, despite Chinas great global environmental impacts. This study brings four hypotheses of gendered difference in environmental concern commonly found in Western literature to urban China, using a national data set of the 2003 China General Social Survey. Structural equation modeling was applied to examine the interaction effects of gender, employment status, and parental roles, and the intervening effects of environmental knowledge. Results show that, unlike in the West, men in urban China were more concerned with environmental issues than women. However, findings of mens greater environmental knowledge relative to women, higher concerns for pollution issues than other issues among Chinese women, and little effect of employment status and parental role on environmental concern are largely consistent with the Western literature. The applicability of common hypotheses from the West may be less limited than expected in the context of China.

Public Attitudes Toward Science and Technology and Concern for the Environment: Testing a Model of Indirect Feedback Effects

This article was inspired by an absence of systematic research on the interaction between public attitudes toward science and technology (PATSAT) and environmental concern, two crucial sets of beliefs and attitudes that help define the modern era. Combining insights from multiple theoretical perspectives, this study proposes and tests an indirect feedback model, which hypothesizes that PATSAT and concern for the environment reciprocally interact with one another. Using data on a nationally representative sample of the United States extracted from Gallup’s 1992 “Health of the Planet” survey conducted in 1992 and structural equation modeling, this study finds that there is a self-enhancing indirect causal loop that connects an ecological worldview as measured by the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) Scale, concern for global environmental problems, and support for science and technology. Belief in the promise of science and technology reduces endorsement of the NEP but is otherwise independent of this causal loop. Yet, reservations about science and technology can be seen largely as a reaction to concern for global environmental problems. Potential implications of these findings and suggestions for future research are offered.