The climate change beliefs fallacy: the influence of climate change beliefs on the perceived consequences of climate change

Abstract

Despite scientific agreement about the anthropogenic cause of climate change, the general public holds different beliefs regarding the causes of climate change. Some believe climate change to be caused by natural processes, while others believe it to be caused by human activities. People’s beliefs regarding the causes of climate change drive both their risk perception and their mitigation behavior, and such beliefs are not easy to alter. Therefore, it is crucial to understand how these beliefs shape people’s perception of the consequences of climate change. We find that beliefs regarding the causes of climate change can lead to different perceptions of the possible consequences of climate change. People who believed climate change to be caused by human activities rather than by natural processes perceived the consequences of the 2017 hurricanes to be worse, as well as to cause more suffering, than people who believed climate change to be caused by natural processes. These results suggest a fallacy, since the suffering of people and animals affected by hurricanes does not depend on the causes of those hurricanes, but rather on the damage that is caused. With regard to communication, it is important to link the currently observable events possible caused by climate change to human behavior, since doing so may increase people’s awareness of the severity of the consequences of anthropogenic climate change and, thus, possibly also their willingness to engage in mitigation behavior and prevention measures.