https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9473-2186
Figures
Abstract
Individuals can act to mitigate climate change and its consequences by changing their own behavior, working with others to address community issues, or advocating for government action. However, little is known about what people are doing or the factors shaping their engagement. We surveyed 741 respondents in the United States to understand their current beliefs, motivations, and behaviors related to climate action. Our respondents report frequently taking everyday actions, such as talking to others about climate change and buying climate friendly products with less frequent, but still higher than expected, advocacy-oriented actions like signing petitions or contacting representatives. We find wide agreement on the importance of government action and the need for government to hear people’s concerns, with more variability in the importance assigned to community and individual actions. Lack of access to resources, social support, or fun approaches to addressing climate change represent obstacles to further action.
Citation: McCormick S, Aldous A, Yarbrough L (2023) Climate action in the United States. PLOS Clim 2(9): e0000175. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000175
Editor: Ferdous Ahmed, IUBAT: International University of Business Agriculture and Technology, MALAYSIA
Received: January 23, 2023; Accepted: August 2, 2023; Published: September 11, 2023
Copyright: © 2023 McCormick et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.
Funding: This work was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to SM, AA, and LY. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Introduction
The majority of Americans are very concerned about climate change and feel at risk from it, with 60% believing that it is a major threat to the United States [US] [1]. Sixty-six percent of Americans say they feel personally responsible for reducing their impact on global warming [2], and seventy-four percent state they are willing to make lifestyle changes to accomplish this [3]. However, the intention to act does not always translate to behavioral engagement [4–6]. Forty percent of Americans report feeling hopeless about climate change [2]. Many individuals feel unable to have an impact on climate change, and these negative emotions result in doing very little [7,8]. This disempowerment may contribute to stress or distress over the negative impacts of climate change, known as climate anxiety. Such anxiety also represents a major barrier to action on the individual level [9,10] representing a negative feedback loop to individual-level engagement. At worst, eco-paralysis can result in a lack of motivation to act, inability to act, and feeling hopeless or powerless [11].
Many factors contribute to behavioral engagement in climate mitigation strategies, including beliefs, attitudes, knowledge, motivation, education, age, and socio-demographic variables [4,5]. Understanding the reasons individuals engage in climate friendly behaviors is crucial to inducing action at both the individual and collective levels [12–15]. Some research has shown that self-efficacy, an individual’s belief that they can complete an action and that it will achieve a desired result, increases climate actions because individuals are more likely to develop positive emotions around that behavior and therefore engage in that behavior regularly [16]. In the past, self-efficacy has been a predictor of pro-environmental behaviors [17–20] including recycling [21–23], reducing water use [18,21,24] and increasing conservation behavior [25,26]. A sense of collective efficacy has also been suggested as playing a key role [25,27–29] by increasing a sense of self-efficacy [25,27]. Additionally, in most instances of environmental action, individuals have been more likely to participate in pro-environmental activities if they are supported and carried out by their community [29,30]. However, emphasizing past personal action does not increase collective action [31].
Demographic factors also act as significant predictors of climate change attitudes and engagement [32,33]. Women are more likely to have in-depth scientific knowledge on climate change, and more likely to be concerned and have higher risk perceptions than their male counterparts [32,34]. Gender has been shown to play a role in leadership for pro-environmental policies with women being more active [35,36]. Individuals of higher socioeconomic status are more likely to engage in pro-climate or anti-climate behavior than their low-SES counterparts, depending on the strength of their belief in or denial of climate change [37]. Race has been predictive of concern about climate change from 2008–2016 [38]. White people were more likely to be dismissive or skeptical about climate change than their Hispanic or Black counterparts [39]. Further, Black people and Hispanics have been significantly more likely to be concerned about the effects of global warming than their White counterparts [39]. The awareness of the potential effects of climate change may translate into willingness to act, with Hispanic and Black individuals significantly more likely to join a pro-environmental campaign or vote based on climate policies than their White counterparts [39]. Lastly, political affiliation has affected climate-related attitudes with conservatives being more likely to deny climate change and less likely to support climate policy or take pro-climate action [40–42].
Other research on climate action has indicated the ways action can be motivated by framing is important, more generally. Motivational framing is more powerful in enhancing behavior change than more negative frames [43]. There are contradictory findings regarding framing or financial rewards versus altruism. While some research has found that framing actions as self-transcendent or altruistic were more likely to motivate people [44,45], other research has seen financial approaches to be as effective as social comparison in increasing uptake of pro-environmental behavior [46]. In either case, values and values-based framing being traditional environmental approaches appears to be valuable [47]. Specific terminology or framing also affects populations differently. For example, the term climate change was more influential for democrats, while extreme weather was motivational for republicans [48].
A large field of questions remains regarding how action on climate can be stimulated. We conducted a randomized trial assessing the impact of a media intervention on climate action, the results of which will be reported subsequently. Here, we examine the baseline survey responses of 741 U.S. adults in order to answer the question, what motivates Americans to take specific kinds of climate action? We summarize the reported frequency with which participants were taking different types of action and their reasons for doing so, noting differences observed by demographic grouping.
Methods
We conducted a randomized three-arm parallel group trial assessing the effects of a media intervention on participants’ climate-related behaviors. The impact of the intervention will be reported separately. Here, we summarize the responses of the 741 participants who completed an 80-item baseline survey exploring their beliefs, attitudes, and actions related to climate change, prior to the intervention. The study was approved by The George Washington University Institutional Review Board. Participants provided electronic consent.
Participant recruitment and survey
Between May 2021 and February 2022, 1,738 potential participants from the U.S. were screened online using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), an online survey participant platform. MTurk “workers” tend to skew towards young, single, liberal, and urban living users. They engage in a broad range of careers, with higher representation of well trained and educated professionals, and lower representation of business, administrative, and hospitality workers. In order to sample from MTurk, researchers establish an account on Amazon and post a job listing describing the “Human Intelligence Task” being asked of workers, together with the compensation being offered. When MTurk workers log onto their accounts, they may choose to undertake tasks for which they are eligible. Amazon’s built-in attention check mechanism screened out 44 potential bots. In addition, because the goal of the intervention was to influence climate-related behaviors among Americans with at least minimal concern about climate change, we imposed a 7-question screening survey assessing attitudes about climate change and excluded 425 applicants who said that the climate is not changing and that human activity does not drive climate change (Supplement 1, questions 3 and 4). While those who are skeptical of a changing climate and human contribution thereto might also be open to action, we focused on those who we thought might be most similar to each other in order to identify action possibilities common to the largest group of Americans. This resulted in 1,269 eligible workers. Limited resources necessitated that we add new participants a few at a time; thus, the enrollment survey was provided to participants as we were able to accommodate them, with the delay resulting in some drop-out. In addition, to make sure we had a racially diverse study population, we oversampled people of color. In this way, we consented and enrolled a total of 756 participants, of whom 741 completed the baseline survey.
The online survey consisted of 80 questions in seven domains: 1) beliefs about climate change; 2) feelings of susceptibility to the impacts of climate change and environmental damage; 3) importance of actions by individuals, communities, and governments [locus of action]; 4] reasons and facilitators for taking action; 5) confidence to take action; 6) motivation to take action; and 7) actions taken during the past six months. Domains 5–7 related to 12 specific actions participants might take, for example, “talk to a friend about threats to the environment,” or “contact government officials to urge them to take action to reduce climate change.” The actions were chosen to represent a range of possibilities, requiring varying financial and other resources, so that at least some options would be available to all of our participants. Responses were on a 5-point Likert scale (Supplement 2).
Data analysis
We used descriptive statistics to summarize demographic data for the study population and compared it with the U.S. adult population in 2020, based on U.S. Census data [42,49–54]. Survey responses, which were nonnormally distributed, were summarized with medians and interquartile ranges. We also reported the percentage of participants who responded positively (4 or 5 on 5-point Likert scale) and the percentage who took each specific action during the past six months (2–5 on scale).
Mean response scores were calculated for 5 domains: reasons, susceptibility, confidence, motivation, and actions taken. We then used Kruskal-Wallis and Wilcoxon Rank Sum tests to compare mean response scores between different demographic groups. For the domains of beliefs and locus of action, we compared individual item responses.
To explore whether participant behaviors might group together according to some underlying constructs, we used R’s psych package (version 2.1.9) to perform factor analysis on responses for actions taken in the last six months. We used the Bartlett test of homogeneity of variances and the Kaiser, Meyer, Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy to determine whether factor analysis was appropriate for the data. Parallel analysis and Velicer’s Minimum Average Partial Test were used to determine the appropriate number of factors, after which we applied minimum residual factor analysis with oblimin rotation. Based on the resulting pattern loadings, we grouped items into categories according to the factor with which they were most highly correlated, and calculated mean response and total number of actions taken for each category.
All analysis was done using R version 4.1.0 [55].
Study population
The survey was completed by 741 participants. They were demographically diverse, although disproportionately young, with 60.7% younger than 40, compared to 39.8% in the U.S. population. They were more likely to claim affiliation with the Democratic party (54.8% v. 29.0%) and less likely to identify as Independent (24.4% v. 42.0%) or Republican (17.8% v. 27.0%), and they were less likely to have household income higher than $100,000 per year (21.6% v. 33.6%). In terms of gender, race, and geographical region, they were fairly representative of U.S. adults (Table 1).
Results
Actions, motivation, and confidence
Respondents were asked what actions they had taken during the previous six month to address environmental issues and climate change. They reported engaging in many types of action to varying frequencies (1 = never to 5 = always). To explore whether participant behaviors might group together according to some underlying constructs, we performed factor analysis on the responses. Each of the 12 actions loaded onto one and only one factor with a correlation > 0.40. Eight loaded onto Factor 1, which we labeled “Advocacy,” and four onto Factor 2, which we labeled “Everyday Actions.” Average scores were considerably higher for everyday actions (median 2.75 = sometimes) than for advocacy actions (median 1.50 = never/rarely) (Table 2).
Everyday actions sometimes taken (median 3.0 for each) included buying environmentally friendly products (93% ever took action), acting to reduce the impact of environmental damage on self, family, and friends (89%) or on the participant’s community (85%), or talking to friends about threats to the environment (80%). Although the median frequency for advocacy activities ranged from 1 = never to 2 = rarely, a considerable proportion of participants had taken these actions at least once. About half had ever invested in or purchased renewable energy sources (53%), and/or advocated for climate (55%) or environmentally friendly (53%) policies. Significant minorities of our sample had signed a petition in support of action to protect the environment (45%), donated money to organizations that protect the environment (38%), contacted government officials to protect the environment (31%) or to reduce the impacts of climate change (29%), or joined a volunteer organization that works to protect the environment (28%).
For each of the listed actions, participants were asked how much they agreed with a statement beginning with “I feel confident I can…” (confidence) or “I would like to…” (motivation). Median confidence (3.83) and motivation scores (3.75) were higher than scores for actions taken (1.92). In both domains, average responses were higher for daily actions versus advocacy actions (4.00 vs. 3.75 confidence, 4.00 vs. 3.62 motivation). The proportion of respondents who agreed or strongly agreed that they felt confident to take an action ranged from 83% for buying eco-friendly products to 59% for contacting government officials and 54% for donating money to an organization. The proportion who agreed that they would like to take an action ranged from 84% for buying environmentally friendly products to 47% for joining an organization (Table 2).
Beliefs, susceptibility, reasons for taking action and locus of action
An overwhelming majority of respondents agreed that the climate is changing (98%) and that human activity accounts for climate change (91%) (Table 3). Perception of personal susceptibility to the impacts of climate change ranged from 66% to 72%, while 54% felt that the negative effects on themselves and their families would be severe.
When asked to rate the significance of several reasons why they engaged in actions to protect the environment, the majority of respondents identified perceived threat of damage to the environment (83%) or perceived threat of climate change (81%) as important factors. For some, motivation was increased by knowing what actions to take to protect the environment (54%) or reduce climate change (51%), or by having family or friends that cared about the environment (48%) or climate change (43%). Relatively few were motivated by perceiving themselves as wealthy enough to help the environment (16%) or having people to help with taking action (18%).
Nearly all respondents rated the importance of actions taken by the government to protect the environment as important or very important (91%, median 5.00, IQR 5.00–5.00). Smaller majorities felt that actions taken by communities (83%, median 4.00, IQR 4.00–5.00) and individuals (59%, median 4.00, IQR 3.00–5.00) were important. Most agreed that they had a responsibility to address environmental health (70%) and climate change (66%), but only 30% indicated that the impact of their individual actions on protecting the environment was significant enough to make a difference (Table 3).
Impact of demographic characteristics
The majority of participants in every demographic group felt that actions at the individual, community, and government levels were all important with less agreement for the importance of individual action increasing to near universal agreement on the importance of government action (Fig 1). More than 50% in every category and more than 75% of Black participants believed that the actions of individuals are important. Older and Black participants were more likely to say that individual actions are very important. More than 75% in every category believed that the actions of communities are important. Black, female, and older participants were more likely to say they are very important. More than 85% in every category believed that the actions of government are important, and with the exception of Republicans, at least 75% in every category ranked government actions as very important.
Democrats scored slightly higher–indicating higher level of engagement—than Independents and Republicans in most domains (Table 4), but the differences were small with the median response the same for most domains, but with a slightly higher proportion of Democrats endorsing the strongest response or a slightly larger minority of Republicans endorsing neutrality or non-agreement.
Responses in most domains were similar by gender, race, and geographical region. Although older participants were somewhat less intense in their beliefs about climate change, they scored higher on reasons for taking action, compared to younger participants. Higher proportions of older adults were motivated by a sense of responsibility and knowing what actions to take. They were also more likely to say that the sacrifice was “doable,” and that family or friends cared about the environment.”
Higher income was associated with higher scores on reasons for taking action, confidence to take action, and actions taken during the past 6 months. For example, among their reasons to act, participants with annual incomes > $100,000 assigned more importance to “I am wealthy enough to engage in actions that protect the environment,” “the sacrifice is doable,” and “I have people helping me figure out how to take action.” Not surprisingly, in terms of actions taken during the previous six months, the largest differences by income were for "invested in or purchased renewable energy sources" and “donated money to an organization working to protect the environment.”
Discussion
This research investigates what actions Americans are taking to address climate change. In our study population, respondents felt responsible for addressing climate change and concerned about the related risks, and they engaged most with what we call ‘everyday actions,’ such as sharing information and buying environmentally friendly products. Many respondents also reported taking climate action at a political level, what we call ‘advocacy actions,’ such as advocating for government or other large scale action on climate change. While the majority of our sample was confident in their ability to advocate, this confidence varied by type of action with signing a petition being higher than contacting a government official. Lower levels of confidence in regard to taking these actions could explain fewer reported actions taken.
Our study population was diverse but differed somewhat from the demographic make-up of the U.S. adult population, so we encourage caution in generalizing to the entire public. As described above, we excluded potential participants who expressed absolute climate skepticism, and our participants were younger and more likely to identify as Democrats. That said, we found little difference in responses by demographic characteristics. As might be expected, Democrats expressed higher engagement with climate change in most of the domains we examined, compared to Republicans and Independents, but the differences were modest. Older and more wealthy respondents endorsed slightly higher motivation or confidence in some areas, and while all participants agreed on the very important role of government in addressing climate change, older and Black participants were somewhat more likely to assign high importance to individual and community-level action.
Our findings also indicate the need to provide climate action resources. Overall, the lack of support in peer groups and lack of fun with which these activities could be engaged, indicates the need to create social spaces where actions are being fostered and approaches to action that are more engaging. Our findings also indicate the need for targeted ways to support specific demographic groups and in specific ways. For example, there is a need to give explicit direction to younger people in what actions to take, such as increasing engagement with energy efficiency or switching to renewable energy sources, eating local foods, and supporting local climate initiatives. People living in the South and Midwest might particularly benefit from increased social support.
While this research is encouraging in that suggests that Americans are taking action on climate, our findings raise many questions for additional research such as what resources are necessary to support action for distinct groups, how to provide explicit guidance to take action, and the best ways to demonstrate the benefits of taking action to specific groups. These questions are critical to answer in the short term to motivate sufficient population-level gains in climate action necessary to stem the climate crisis.
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