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This article examines the strategies used by a democratic state to suppress dissent by criminalizing social protest activities. We compile and tabulate new legislation in Australia affecting protest rights from 2010 to 2020. Using data collected from the Facebook pages of 728 environmental groups and climate-related arrests reported in media articles, we then examine connections between climate change protest and protest criminalization in Australia between 2010 and 2019. Australian governments are shown to have criminalized climate protest via large-scale arrests by introducing laws curtailing protest freedoms and expanding police and corporate discretionary power in the application of those laws. State, corporate, and media actors are shown to engage in the rhetorical criminalization of climate protest, portraying protesters as threats to economic and political interests and to national security. However, the ongoing growth of climate change activism indicates that these criminalization strategies seeking to prevent climate protest may have been largely ineffective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between wealth and climate change concern has been a focus of several studies. In this article, we hypothesize that richer households (and countries) are less concerned about climate change because wealth provides a buffer against some of the related risks. This leads people in wealthier countries and households to perceive a greater sense of control over climate change impacts, which in turn results in lower levels of concern. We tested this hypothesis using a unique household survey encompassing 11 OECD countries and over 10,000 households and applying mixed multi-level regression models. Our results confirmed a statistically significant negative relationship between country and household wealth and individuals' perceptions of the seriousness of climate change. This study contributes to current literature by showing that this relationship is mediated through sense of control, measured at the country level by the country's readiness index and at the individual household level by the extent of adoption of energy efficiency improvements. These findings raise the question of how best to incentivize action on climate change amongst those with the ability—but not necessarily the motivation—to respond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For over 50 years, scientists have sounded alarms that the burning of fossil fuels is causing changes to the Earth's climate, and that failure to take action on climate change will have devastating consequences. Despite this urgency, CO2 emissions (and global temperatures) continue to climb. Progress on mitigating climate change is slowed by the stubborn persistence of climate skepticism, as well as a failure for nonskeptics to translate their concern about climate change into meaningful action. The goal of this article is to describe and synthesize research on how to understand (and reduce) this public inaction on climate change. In the first half of the article, we examine the question of how to understand (and overcome) climate change skepticism. We review international evidence regarding the role of demographics, ideologies, and conspiracist worldviews in shaping people's willingness to believe in the reality of human‐caused climate change. We then review theory and research on how to successfully capture the attention of—and change the behavior of—people who traditionally resist climate change messages, such as those high in conservatism and free‐market beliefs. In the second half of the article, we examine how to promote more climate‐friendly behaviors among people who believe in the reality of climate change. Evidence will be reviewed suggesting that many people agree that climate change is caused by humans, but are not yet willing to make the necessary investments and sacrifices to respond to this threat. We then draw on relevant literatures to critically discuss three strategies for promoting proenvironmental behavior: (i) optimistic versus pessimistic messages; (ii) in‐group versus out‐group messenger effects; and (c) the use of descriptive and injunctive norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a worryingly large chasm between scientific consensus and popular opinion. Roughly one third of Americans are skeptical that humans are primarily responsible for climate change; rates of some infectious diseases are climbing in the face of anti-immunization beliefs; and significant numbers of the population worldwide are antievolution creationists. It is easy to assume that resistance to an evidence-based message is a result of ignorance or failure to grasp evidence (the "deficit model" of science communication). But increasingly, theorists understand there are limits to this approach, and that if people are motivated to reject science, then repeating evidence will have little impact. In an effort to create a transtheoretical language for describing these underlying motivations, we introduce the notion of "attitude roots." Attitude roots are the underlying fears, ideologies, worldviews, and identity needs that sustain and motivate specific "surface" attitudes like climate skepticism and creationism. It is the antiscience attitude that people hear and see, but it is the attitude root--what lies under the surface--that allows the surface attitudes to survive even when they are challenged by evidence. We group these attitude roots within 6 themes--worldviews, conspiratorial ideation, vested interests, personal identity expression, social identity needs, and fears and phobias--and review literature relevant to them. We then use these insights to develop a "jiu jitsu" model of persuasion that places emphasis on creating change by aligning with (rather than competing with) these attitude roots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the first time this millennium, growth in carbon emissions has slowed. Indeed, the year 2014 was the first time in 40 years that the planet saw zero growth in emissions. We examine whether this message of progress can be effective in motivating people to engage in mitigation efforts. This question dovetails with commentary suggesting that gloomy messages about climate change risk fatiguing the population, and that alternative approaches are necessary. It is also informed by work suggesting that hope is a motivating force in terms of engaging in collective action and social change. Study 1 ( N = 574) showed that negative emotions were strongly related to mitigation motivation and feelings of efficacy, but hope-related emotions had a much weaker relationship with these constructs. In the main experiment (Study 2: N = 431) participants read an optimistic, pessimistic, or neutral message about the rate of progress in reducing global carbon emissions. Relative to the pessimistic message, the optimistic message reduced participants’ sense that climate change represented a risk to them, and the associated feelings of distress. Consequently, the optimistic message was less successful in increasing mitigation motivation than the pessimistic message. In sum, predictions that the optimistic message would increase efficacy did not transpire; concerns that the optimistic message would increase complacency did transpire. Recent progress in curbing global carbon emissions is welcome, but we found no evidence that messages focusing on this progress constitute an effective communication strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental challenges are often marked by an intergroup dimension. Political conservatives and progressives are divided on their beliefs about climate change, farmers come into conflict with scientists and environmentalists over water allocation or species protection, and communities oppose big business and mining companies that threaten their local environment. These intergroup tensions are reminders of the powerful influence social contexts and group memberships can have on attitudes, beliefs, and actions relating to climate change and the environment more broadly. In this paper, we use social identity theory to help describe and explain these processes. We review literature showing, how conceiving of oneself in terms of a particular social identity influences our environmental attitudes and behaviors, how relations between groups can impact on environmental outcomes, and how the content of social identities can direct group members to act in more or less pro-environmental ways. We discuss the similarities and differences between the social identity approach to these phenomena and related theories, such as cultural cognition theory, the theory of planned behavior, and value-belief-norm theory. Importantly, we also advance social-identity based strategies to foster more sustainable environmental attitudes and behaviors. Although this theoretical approach can provide important insights and potential solutions, more research is needed to build the empirical base, especially in relation to testing social identity solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies reveal that the more efficacious people feel in their ability to combat climate change, the more threatened they feel by it. This positive correlation deserves unpacking, given that classic theories position efficacy beliefs as coping appraisals that help manage threats. First, we tested whether the relationship is an artifact of overlap with a latent variable that is implicated in both threat and efficacy: “green” identity. Second, we tested whether efficacy perceptions are (partly) motivated cognitions designed to ameliorate helplessness in the face of threat. Study 1 ( N = 4345 Australians) replicated the positive correlation between threat and efficacy, and showed that the relationships remained after controlling for green identity. Direct evidence for motivated control was found in Study 2 ( N = 212 Americans): Participants who read a high-threat message reported more (collective) efficacy than did those who read a climate change message that downplayed threat. Implications for theoretical models of control are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has demonstrated a striking difference in climate change beliefs and policy support between people who identify with the right-wing of politics and with the left-wing of politics. But are we destined to continue with this divergence? We suggest that there is movement around these differences based on the politicization of climate change and we conducted two experimental studies with 126 and 646 people, respectively, to examine this effect. We found that those people whose political identity was made salient were less likely to believe in an anthropogenic cause of climate change and less likely to support government climate change policies than those whose identity was not made salient; particularly when those people were aligned with the right-wing of politics. The results demonstrate the importance of the salience of one's political identity in determining attitudes and beliefs even for scientific facts such as climate change. Our research also identifies some ways forward in dealing with climate change-based on depoliticizing the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]