Forest Owners' Response to Climate Change : University Education Trumps Value Profile
Blennow, Kristina LU ; Persson, Johannes LU
; Persson, Erik
LU
and Hanewinkel, Marc
(2016)
In PLoS ONE
11(5).
- Abstract
- Do forest owners’ levels of education or value profiles explain their responses to climate change? The cultural cognition thesis (CCT) has cast serious doubt on the familiar and often criticized "knowledge deficit" model, which says that laypeople are less concerned about climate change because they lack scientific knowledge. Advocates of CCT maintain that citizens with the highest degrees of scientific literacy and numeracy are not the most concerned about climate change. Rather, this is the group in which cultural polarization is greatest, and thus individuals with more limited scientific literacy and numeracy are more concerned about climate change under certain circumstances than those with higher scientific literacy and numeracy. The... (More)
- Do forest owners’ levels of education or value profiles explain their responses to climate change? The cultural cognition thesis (CCT) has cast serious doubt on the familiar and often criticized "knowledge deficit" model, which says that laypeople are less concerned about climate change because they lack scientific knowledge. Advocates of CCT maintain that citizens with the highest degrees of scientific literacy and numeracy are not the most concerned about climate change. Rather, this is the group in which cultural polarization is greatest, and thus individuals with more limited scientific literacy and numeracy are more concerned about climate change under certain circumstances than those with higher scientific literacy and numeracy. The CCT predicts that cultural and other values will trump the positive effects of education on some forest owners' attitudes to climate change. Here, using survey data collected in 2010 from 766 private forest owners in Sweden and Germany, we provide the first evidence that perceptions of climate change risk are uncorrelated with, or sometimes positively correlated with, education level and can be explained without reference to cultural or other values. We conclude that the recent claim that advanced scientific literacy and numeracy polarizes perceptions of climate change risk is unsupported by the forest owner data. In neither of the two countries was university education found to reduce the perception of risk from climate change. Indeed in most cases university education increased the perception of risk. Even more importantly, the effect of university education was not dependent on the individuals' value profile. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/3ed57d94-4433-4ed6-bd1b-4b886d415132
- author
- Blennow, Kristina
LU
; Persson, Johannes
LU
; Persson, Erik
LU
and Hanewinkel, Marc
- organization
- publishing date
- 2016-05-25
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- climate change response, forest management, Risk perception, risk communication, education and cultural values
- in
- PLoS ONE
- volume
- 11
- issue
- 5
- article number
- e0155137
- pages
- 13 pages
- publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:84971451909
- pmid:27223473
- wos:000376881700016
- ISSN
- 1932-6203
- DOI
- 10.1371/journal.pone.0155137
- project
- Science and Proven Experience
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 3ed57d94-4433-4ed6-bd1b-4b886d415132
- date added to LUP
- 2016-05-26 17:22:09
- date last changed
- 2022-11-12 21:50:26
@article{3ed57d94-4433-4ed6-bd1b-4b886d415132,
abstract = {{Do forest owners’ levels of education or value profiles explain their responses to climate change? The cultural cognition thesis (CCT) has cast serious doubt on the familiar and often criticized "knowledge deficit" model, which says that laypeople are less concerned about climate change because they lack scientific knowledge. Advocates of CCT maintain that citizens with the highest degrees of scientific literacy and numeracy are not the most concerned about climate change. Rather, this is the group in which cultural polarization is greatest, and thus individuals with more limited scientific literacy and numeracy are more concerned about climate change under certain circumstances than those with higher scientific literacy and numeracy. The CCT predicts that cultural and other values will trump the positive effects of education on some forest owners' attitudes to climate change. Here, using survey data collected in 2010 from 766 private forest owners in Sweden and Germany, we provide the first evidence that perceptions of climate change risk are uncorrelated with, or sometimes positively correlated with, education level and can be explained without reference to cultural or other values. We conclude that the recent claim that advanced scientific literacy and numeracy polarizes perceptions of climate change risk is unsupported by the forest owner data. In neither of the two countries was university education found to reduce the perception of risk from climate change. Indeed in most cases university education increased the perception of risk. Even more importantly, the effect of university education was not dependent on the individuals' value profile.}},
author = {{Blennow, Kristina and Persson, Johannes and Persson, Erik and Hanewinkel, Marc}},
issn = {{1932-6203}},
keywords = {{climate change response; forest management; Risk perception; risk communication; education and cultural values}},
language = {{eng}},
month = {{05}},
number = {{5}},
publisher = {{Public Library of Science (PLoS)}},
series = {{PLoS ONE}},
title = {{Forest Owners' Response to Climate Change : University Education Trumps Value Profile}},
url = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/8097984/Blennow_Persson_et_al_2016_.pdf}},
doi = {{10.1371/journal.pone.0155137}},
volume = {{11}},
year = {{2016}},
}