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Does public knowledge of climate change really matter in Australia?

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journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-20, 08:27 authored by Bruce TranterBruce Tranter
Replicating questions on climate change and polar knowledge from the United States, this study examines the impact of climate related facts for predicting acceptance of anthropogenic climate change, and for predicting Green voting in Australia. Analysis of national survey data from the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes show that the likelihood of Green voting increases with climate knowledge. Climate-related knowledge is also positively associated with acceptance of anthropogenic climate change, but the effect of knowledge is moderated by party political identification. Greens, Labor Party identifiers and politically un-affiliated Australians align more closely with the scientific consensus on climate change as their climate knowledge increases. However, climate knowledge has no effect on the climate change attitudes of Liberal and National party identifiers. Climate knowledge also interacts with gender. Climate knowledge has a stronger association with anthropogenic climate change beliefs among women than it does among men. These findings suggest the information deficit model of science communication is likely to be efficacious among supporters of politically progressive parties in Australia, but less so among political conservatives.

Funding

Australian Research Council

History

Publication title

Environmental Communication

Volume

14

Issue

4

Pagination

537-554

ISSN

1752-4032

Department/School

School of Social Sciences

Publisher

Routledge

Place of publication

United States

Rights statement

© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Repository Status

  • Restricted

Socio-economic Objectives

Social impacts of climate change and variability

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    University Of Tasmania

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