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In recent decades, greater acknowledgement has been given to climate change as a cultural phenomenon. This paper takes a cultural lens to the topic of climate change, in which climate-relevant understandings are grounded in wider cultural, political and material contexts. We approach climate-relevant accounts at the level of the everyday, understood as a theoretically problematic and politically contested space This is in contrast to simply being the backdrop to mundane, repetitive actions contributing to environmental degradation and the site of mitigative actions. Taking discourse as a form of practice in which fragments of cultural knowledge are drawn on to construct our environmental problems, we investigate citizens’ accounts of climate-relevant issues in three culturally diverse emerging economies: Brazil, South Africa and China. These settings are important because greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are predicted to significantly increase in these countries in the future. We conducted semi-structured interviews with a range of citizens in each country using a narrative approach to contextualise climate-relevant issues as part of people’s lifestyle narratives. Participants overwhelmingly framed their accounts in the context of locally-salient issues, and few accounts explicitly referred to the phenomenon of climate change. Instead, elements of climate changes were conflated with other environmental issues and related to a wide range of cultural assumptions that influenced understandings and implied particular ways of responding to environmental problems. We conclude that climate change scholars should address locally relevant understandings and develop dialogues that can wider meanings that construct climate-relevant issues in vernacular ways at the local level. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s10584-019-02477-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Non-technical summary ‘Discourses of climate delay’ pervade current debates on climate action. These discourses accept the existence of climate change, but justify inaction or inadequate efforts. In contemporary discussions on what actions should be taken, by whom and how fast, proponents of climate delay would argue for minimal action or action taken by others. They focus attention on the negative social effects of climate policies and raise doubt that mitigation is possible. Here, we outline the common features of climate delay discourses and provide a guide to identifying them.

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link. The literature suggests that extreme weather experiences have potential to increase climate change engagement by influencing the way people perceive the proximity and implications of climate change. Yet, limited attention has been directed at investigating how individual differences in the subjective interpretation of extreme weather events as indications of climate change moderate the link between extreme weather experiences and climate change attitudes. This article contends that subjective attribution of extreme weather events to climate change is a necessary condition for extreme weather experiences to be translated into climate change mitigation responses, and that subjective attribution of extreme weather to climate change is influenced by the psychological and social contexts in which individuals appraise their experiences with extreme weather. Using survey data gathered in the aftermath of severe flooding across the UK in winter 2013/2014, personal experience of this flooding event is shown to only directly predict perceived threat from climate change, and indirectly predict climate change mitigation responses, among individuals who subjectively attributed the floods to climate change. Additionally, subjective attribution of the floods to climate change is significantly predicted by pre-existing climate change belief, political affiliation and perceived normative cues. Attempts to harness extreme weather experiences as a route to engaging the public must be attentive to the heterogeneity of opinion on the attributability of extreme weather events to climate change.

The rapid development of groundwater systems as part of urban water supplies around the globe is raising critical questions regarding the sustainable management of this essential resource. Yet, in many major cities, the absence of an effective policy regime means that the practice of groundwater exploitation is driven by the actions of domestic households and drilling contractors. Understanding what shapes the decisions and practices of these actors, their understandings of the groundwater resource and the extent to which scientific knowledge shapes this understanding, is an area of critical importance that is currently under-researched. Using a mixed-methods methodology, the paper explores domestic practices of groundwater abstraction in Lagos, Nigeria. It finds that there is a disjuncture between the households who are actively shaping exploitation of the groundwater resource on a day-to-day basis and science and state actors. This disjuncture results in household decisions that are influenced by commonly held, but potentially outdated, perceptions of the groundwater resource rather than scientific evidence or policy instruments. The unseen nature of groundwater resources effectively renders the scale of changing groundwater conditions invisible to households and the state, adding to the challenge of influencing practice. Addressing this disjuncture requires not just more scientific knowledge, but also the active construction of interfaces with, and between, non-state actors through which knowledge can be confronted, discussed and shared.

There is now a large body of research into public understanding of climate change and energy challenges. There is however little empirical examination of how actors from politics, government, civil society and non-governmental organisations regard the role of public engagement in climate and energy policy. Research is lacking as to their views on the desirability of active citizen participation or indeed whether they draw on the findings from social science research in forming strategies and policy. This paper presents an analysis of interviews with policy experts and deliberative seminars held with non-governmental stakeholders acting in an intermediary capacity between climate policy and the public. A comparison of four policy scenarios was used to explore intermediaries’ beliefs about the role of the public in delivering the UK’s Climate Change Act targets. The results reveal a general antipathy to policies that seek to ‘engage’ the public and a lack of knowledge amongst seminar participants about how insights from the social sciences can be used to build and sustain public engagement. This research exposes the need to assess the means by which public engagement can better be understood, integrated and most effectively utilised for sustainable progression towards climate targets.

This paper examines the content and responses to an art installation addressing climate change in the Pacific, collected at the Adapt and Survive exhibition held at the University of the South Pacific Oceania Centre Gallery in 2014. The artist statement on the exhibition emphasised that it sought to explore the causes and effects of climate change, and to raise awareness of its wider impacts for cultural loss and societal change. As well as conducting a series of interviews with the artist, visitors to the exhibition were invited to complete a short survey concerning their thoughts about climate change and reactions to the exhibition, both before and after they viewed the artworks. The artist’s perspectives emphasised the significance of climate change for the region, in the context of traditional responses to environmental problems. The audience survey results suggest that there were high levels of agreement among visitors that the place where they live is being affected by climate change. While emphasising both negative and positive emotional reactions to the artworks, people for the most part expressed confidence and hope that climate change can be effectively addressed, although there was uncertainty on whether or not Pacific islands had the resources to do so. Our study is limited by the small sample size available, but points to directions for future research in this under-developed field.

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the role of the visual arts for communicating climate change in the context of the Pacific islands, through the perspectives of artists and climate change practitioners.Design/methodology/approachAs part of an “Eco Arts” project carried out in Fiji, semi-structured research interviews were undertaken with artists and climate change practitioners.FindingsParticipants’ motivations to produce art reflected their personal concerns about, and experiences of, climate change. There was an intention to use art-based approaches to raise awareness and promote action on climate change. The artwork produced drew on metaphors and storytelling to convey future climate impacts and aspects of climate change relevant to Fijian and Pacific communities.Research limitations/implicationsThe study reports the perspectives of participants and discusses the potential uses of arts communication. Conclusions cannot be drawn from the findings regarding the effectiveness of specific artwork or of arts communication as a general approach.Practical implicationsThe research offers suggestions for the inclusion of creative approaches to climate change communication within education and vocational training. A consideration of the perspectives of artist–practitioners has implications for the design and conduct of climate change communication.Social implicationsThe involvement of artist–practitioners in the communication of climate change offers the potential for novel discussions and interpretations of climate change with individuals and within communities, which complement more formal or scientific communication.Originality/valueThe present study identifies the motivations and objectives of artist–practitioners involved in climate change communication. The authors highlight the role of personal experience and their use of artistic concepts and creative considerations pertinent to the geography and culture of the Pacific region.

Understanding public perceptions of climate change is critical in order to develop effective communication strategies, democratic policies, and socially robust technologies. This chapter provides an overview of research on the nature and dynamics of public perceptions of climate change. Awareness about climate change has become widespread over the last few decades, although concern has been variable over time and internationally. Skepticism about the reality and severity of climate change is low overall among the public worldwide, though it grew in some Western nations in the late 2000s, particularly among more right-leaning constituencies. Factors influencing public perceptions include weather and weather events, economic factors, sociopolitical events and media coverage, and individual-level factors, particularly a person’s worldviews and ideology. There has been a reliance on survey research in this field, and future work should expand the role for other methods and allied disciplines (e.g., ethnography, neuroscience).

This research presents three case studies, through which a creative approach to developing dialogue around climate change is outlined. By working with three distinct communities and encouraging them to discuss and write poetry about how climate change affects them, we demonstrate how such an approach might be adopted at this level. By analysing the discussions and poetry that arose out of these workshops we show how this community-level approach to communicating climate change is an essential counterpart to wider-scale quantitative research. The engagement of each community with climate change is dependent on the lived experiences of their members; a failure to recognise this results in less effective communications and can also cause communities to feel isolated and helpless. By considering the individual needs and aspirations of these communities we can support effective dialogue around the topic of climate change, and in doing so can better engender positive action against the negative effects of anthropogenic climate change.

Urgent and radical transition to lower-carbon forms of society is imperative to limit current and future climate change impacts. Behavioural spillover theory offers a way to catalyse broad lifestyle change from one behaviour to another in ways that generate greater impacts than piecemeal interventions. Despite growing policy and research attention, the evidence for behavioural spillover and the processes driving the phenomenon are unclear. The literature is split between studies that provide evidence for positive spillover effects (where an intervention targeting an environmentally-conscious behaviour leads to an increase in another functionally related behaviour) and negative spillover effects (where an intervention targeting an environmentally-conscious behaviour leads to a decrease in another functionally-related behaviour). In summarising findings, particular attention is given to the implications for climate-relevant behaviours. While few examples of climate-relevant behavioural spillover exist, studies do report positive and negative spillovers to other actions, as well as spillovers from behaviour to support for climate change policy. There is also some evidence that easier behaviours can lead to more committed actions. The potential contribution of social practice theory to understanding spillover is discussed, identifying three novel pathways to behavioural spillover: via carriers of practices, materiality, and through relationships between practices within wider systems of practice. In considering future research directions, the relatively neglected role of social norms is discussed as a means to generate the momentum required for substantial lifestyle change, and as a way of circumventing obstructive and intransigent climate change beliefs.

The winter of 2013/2014 saw a series of severe storms hit the UK, leading to widespread flooding, a major emergency response and extensive media exposure. Previous research indicates that experiencing extreme weather events has the potential to heighten engagement with climate change, however the process by which this occurs remains largely unknown, and establishing a clear causal relationship from experience to perceptions is methodologically challenging. The UK winter flooding offered a natural experiment to examine this question in detail. We compare individuals personally affected by flooding (n = 162) to a nationally representative sample (n = 975). We show that direct experience of flooding leads to an overall increased salience of climate change, pronounced emotional responses and greater perceived personal vulnerability and risk perceptions. We also present the first evidence that direct flooding experience can give rise to behavioural intentions beyond individual sustainability actions, including support for mitigation policies, and personal climate adaptation in matters unrelated to the direct experience. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10584-016-1837-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Public engagement with climate change is critical for maintaining the impetus for meaningful emissions cuts. Ocean acidification (OA) is increasingly recognized by marine scientists as an important, but often overlooked, consequence of anthropogenic emissions1, 2. Although substantial evidence now exists concerning people’s understanding of climate change more generally3, very little is known about public perceptions of OA. Here, for the first time, we characterize in detail people’s understanding of this topic using survey data obtained in Great Britain (n = 2,501) during 2013 and 2014. We draw on theories of risk perception and consider how personal values influence attitudes towards OA. We find that public awareness of OA is very low compared to that of climate change, and was unaffected by the publication of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. Using an experimental approach, we show that providing basic information can heighten concern about OA, however, we find that attitude polarization along value-based lines may occur if the topic is explicitly associated with climate change. We discuss the implications of our findings for public engagement with OA, and the importance of learning lessons from communications research relating to climate change.

It is likely that climate change communications and media coverage will increasingly stress the importance of adaptation, yet little is known about whether or how this may affect attitudes towards mitigation. Despite concerns that communicating adaptation could undermine public support for mitigation, previous research has found it can have the opposite effect by increasing risk salience. It is also unclear whether people respond differently to information about mitigation and adaptation depending on whether action is framed as an individual or government responsibility. Using an experimental design, this study sought to examine how public attitudes towards mitigation are influenced by varying climate change messages, and how this might interact with prior attitudes to climate change. UK-based participants (N = 800) read one of four texts in a 2 × 2 design comparing adaptation versus mitigation information and personal versus governmental action. No main effect was found for adaptation versus mitigation framing, nor for individual action versus government policy, but we did observe a series of interaction effects with prior attitudes to climate change. Mitigation and adaptation information affected participants’ responses differently depending on their pre-existing levels of concern about climate change, suggesting that mitigation framings may be more engaging for those with high levels of concern, whereas adaptation framings may be more engaging for low-concern individuals. Government mitigation action appears to engender particularly polarised attitudes according to prior concern. Implications for climate change communications are considered.