3 Identifying with the climate crisis: Understanding the influences of social identities on climate change belief and attitudes
Zoe Barley and Shiro Wachira
Stanford University
3.3 PART III: How Specific Identities Relate to Climate Change and Climate Action
3.3.1 Identity as an Environmentalist
The term "environmentalist" refers to individuals who are concerned with or advocate for the protection of the environment (Oxford Languages). However, understanding the nuances between someone who is simply concerned and someone who actively advocates becomes crucial when examining this avowed identity in the context of the climate crisis. The label "environmentalist" is complex, as it can be perceived both as socially beneficial and harmful, depending on the situation. Due to the moral ambiguity associated with this identity, some people are reluctant to publicly display their affiliation with the environmental movement through collective action.
Like all identities, environmentalism cannot be examined in isolation. The climate crisis has become highly politicized (a topic explored in-depth in section IIIc), leading many individuals to use public displays of environmentalism (or the lack thereof) to signal their political affiliation. Environmentalism is frequently used to display one's support for or adherence to certain moral, social, or political values, often in a performative or conspicuous manner, with the intention of gaining social approval. This phenomenon is called virtue signaling and plays an important role in demonstrating social identity. A study conducted by Brick, Sherman, and Kim in 2017 explored this phenomenon and found that "environmentalist identity predicted pro-environmental behavior more strongly for high-visibility behaviors, controlling for individual-level confounds (attitudes, political identity) and behavior-level factors (difficulty, effectiveness)" (Brick et al., 226). This influence of social identity on in-group norms and environmental action emphasizes the importance of considering visibility when addressing the climate crisis. While visible actions may engage certain demographics, they may also alienate others, highlighting the need for inclusive approaches to motivate broad and collective climate action.
In a 2014 study by Kashima, Paladino, and Margetts, researchers aimed to unravel the complexities of this social identity by distinguishing between two key elements: environmentalist identity and environmental striving. Environmentalist identity refers to being an environmentally friendly person according to cultural norms, while environmental striving encompasses personal motivations that go beyond these norms. The study found that individuals who identified as environmentalists were likely to engage in green shopping and green talk, whereas environmental strivers were more likely to make personal sacrifices such as driving less, which incurs higher personal costs. The authors acknowledged the limitations of their findings, as their study focused on only three behaviors, but they suggested that further examination of environmental striving's impact and cultivation is warranted. As they concluded, "Whereas mundane environmentalism overlaps greatly with the mainstream of many industrialized (and even industrializing) societies, environmental activism situates itself outside the mainstream and attempts to change the society... If mundane environmentalism and environmental activism differentiate environmentalism along the political dimension of mainstream vs. activism, environmental striving is agnostic to the political dimension" (Kashima et al., 73). This finding is an important consideration when analyzing the study below.
In a pre-registered study published in February 2023, researchers explored the distinction between environmental intent and impact among a representative sample of the British public. The study focused on participants' intentions to take collective climate action and their involvement with Extinction Rebellion (XR). XR defines itself as "a decentralized, international and politically non-partisan movement using non-violent direct action and civil disobedience to persuade governments to act justly on the Climate and Ecological Emergency" (What is XR?). The researchers hypothesized that individuals with high collective action intentions (defined as a willingness to perform behaviors such as donating to an environmental cause and posting on social media about their environmental views) and strong social identification with XR would exhibit greater engagement with XR. They predicted that this effect would be mediated by two factors: beliefs about XR's collective efficacy and norm perceptions of climate action.
The study's outcome variable was whether or not a participant joined XR's mailing list and the extent to which they were willing to answer additional questions to "help XR." The majority of participants who agreed to additional questioning answered all five questions, leading the researchers to categorize this secondary measure of behavioral engagement with XR as a binary variable (Parkes et al., 9). The low barrier to entry for this outcome variable raises concerns about the study. The researchers were unable to provide strong support for their initial hypothesis or either of its mediators. However, they did find that the strongest predictor of social identification with XR (but not behavior) was whether or not participants held positive perceptions of XR members (Parkes et al., 17). Participants expressed various opinions about XR, and some criticized the movement for its extreme tactics, causing disruption and misery to ordinary people (Parkes et al., 21). While environmentalism can be used to virtue-signal, many environmentalists have a negative reputation, particularly when associated with extreme tactics employed by groups like XR.
Given the intricate network of virtues associated with an environmentalist identity, many individuals are hesitant to publicly proclaim their affiliation with this social group through collective action. Based on this review of the research, to encourage higher rates of climate action, organizations should encourage higher rates of climate action by adopting a dual strategy which promotes meaningful and private environmental behaviors (such as voting) while dissociating environmentalism from the radical activism associated with high-SES groups such as XR. Instead, it should focus on engaging environmental strivers who are motivated by actions that demonstrate their concern for the climate without necessitating the adoption of an activist identity.
3.3.2 Political Identity
Political polarization is far and away the most highly investigated topic when it comes to group identity and the climate crisis. The climate crisis has become highly politicized within developed countries, with the left perceiving it as an urgent matter demanding unwavering attention, while the right tends to downplay or even deny climate change. However, this stark division was not always so apparent. In the scholarly literature, climate change initially emerged as a scientific issue around 1970, remaining separate from political affiliations for the following two decades. It was only in the mid-1990s that climate change became a polarizing topic. Over the past 30 years, polarization regarding climate change has been rapidly increasing (see Chinn et al. for an in-depth discussion of this topic). Overcoming these entrenched political divides is crucial if we hope to address the climate crisis effectively.
Research on politics and climate primarily falls into two categories: partisan identity and political affiliation. Partisan identity refers to the group-level process of aligning politically with other members of one's community, while political ideology indicates an individual's position on the political spectrum, irrespective of their group identity. A 2017 meta-analysis investigated how the interaction between these factors shapes an individual's climate opinions. The analysis concluded that “the strengthening relationship between political affiliation and environmental concern is due primarily to partisan sorting, rather than to issue polarization on environmental issues” (Cruz, 2017). This finding is encouraging for the environmental movement since it suggests that changing the stance of a political party may be sufficient over changing the minds of individuals. If a small number of influential conservative voices within the Republican party were to express meaningful concern about the climate crisis, it could potentially shift the tide and lead to the passage of important policies.
Regrettably, until recently, much of the literature on political polarization and climate change has focused on individual-level processes. Nonetheless, several noteworthy findings from this research deserve examination, particularly those related to the salience of partisan identities and downplaying their significance. As discussed in the introduction to this chapter, saliency plays a critical role in social identity. If an identity is not salient to us, it is unlikely to significantly impact our decisions or actions at a given moment. An Australian paper published in 2014 demonstrated the meaningful impacts of saliency on climate belief and action, “perceived human contribution to climate change was significantly lower for people who identified with the right-wing of politics and whose political identity was made salient (64.4%) than those people who identified with the right-wing of politics but whose political identity was not made salient (40.5%) (F(1,102) = 13.48, p < .001)” (Unsworth & Fielding, 2014). It is striking to note that a mere difference in saliency resulted in a more than 20% difference in beliefs. Given the extreme level of polarization, this 20% can meaningfully influence policy. Additionally, if 20% of an ingroup shifts their opinion, it may serve as a catalyst for the remainder of the group to follow suit. With this in mind, the research turns to another crucial question: how can we de-emphasize political identities and uplift other aspects of an individual's identity?
Several studies have attempted to address this question. A 2020 study found that among Republican parents, receiving a message about the impact of climate change on future generations increased their climate change concern and intended pro-climate political behaviors. However, this framing effect disappeared when a partisan identity was primed before the message (Diamond, 2020). Interestingly, the effect did not hold for Democratic parents; they needed to be primed with their Democratic identity prior to their parental identity to observe a meaningful shift in pro-climate behaviors. The researchers hypothesize two reasons for this backfiring effect. The first is that a focus on the future may make the crisis seem less urgent (i.e. it will impact my children’s children and not my children, therefore my direct level of concern is lower). The second reason is known as the “trump effect.” Given the timeline of the study the researchers were able to watch Democratic parents lose faith in the efficacy of their political actions pre- and post-Donald Trump’s election in 2016. The backfire effect may be due to “a reduction in perceived effectiveness of political action on climate change after the change in presidential administration in 2017” (Diamond, 1145). Unfortunately, there is no foolproof method to predict or prevent such backfiring, which is why individual interventions targeting identity salience should be approached cautiously.
The next consideration is what can and should be done to leverage group-level political affiliations. Based on a recently published review of the literature the most promising suggestions seem to be “correcting misperceptions of social norms, and…having trusted leaders—whether political elites, other elites, or experts— communicate about climate change” (Schulte et al., 2020). These approaches rely on combating something known as pluralistic ignorance within the Republican party concerning the climate crisis. Pluralistic ignorance is a situation in which a person thinks that their privately held beliefs are contrary to the majority’s beliefs, when in actuality the majority also holds the same beliefs. The majority is individually afraid to openly oppose a norm because it appears that everyone else agrees with it, so the widely unsupported norm continues. When it comes to Republican concern surrounding the climate crisis, the utilization of a few key political figures within the Republican party and a leveraging of salient non-political identities (such as parenthood) have the potential to significantly alter the party's beliefs on the subject.
Although the polarization of the climate crisis has been portrayed as a negative occurrence thus far, the prioritization of group identity over personal beliefs may ultimately facilitate rapid change. By highlighting non-political identities relevant to the climate crisis, challenging social norms rooted in misconceptions about the reality of global warming, and leveraging the voices of influential political leaders within the Republican party, we have the potential to significantly reduce climate change polarization. The critical question that needs to be addressed moving forward is how to incentivize the aforementioned steps.
3.3.3 Racial and Cultural Identity
3.3.3.1 Overview – unpacking the role of race, and culture in climate change research
In closing, we discuss existing research between ascribed, stable social identities and climate change. For the purposes of this discussion, we focus primarily on racial and cultural identity. In part because these demographic dimensions tend to be generally underrepresented in the literature on climate change (Salil Benegal et al., 2022), with a lot of the empirical work reviewed in this volume, instead focusing on age, educational status, socio-economic status, and gender.
As discussed in the preceding section of this chapter, researchers have generally found that demographic identities are less likely to be directly predictive of climate change attitudes. However, it is worth exploring the research that does exist liking demographic identities to climate change attitudes for at least three reasons. The first, is that demographic identities are likely to be highly correlated with, if not causally influence characteristics like political identity (84% of Black voters and 63% of Latino voters are registered Democrats (Pew Research Center, 2018)), or identity as an environmentalist (e.g. through strong place-based ties). The second, is that it is reasonable to believe that demographic identities, and in particular, race and culture, would have impact different characteristics identified in earlier chapters as being correlated with climate change behavior or belief (e.g. levels of social trust, risk perception, social norms, perceived behavioral control, identification with nature). Finally, demographic factors may influence dynamics that determine climate change attitudes, that have not been extensively covered in this volume, such as subjective adaptive capacity (which refers to the ability of an individual, or a community, to adapt to the impacts of climate change) (Fresque-Baxter & Armitage, 2012).
Before reviewing available findings, it is worth noting that overall, the relationship between climate change beliefs and racial or cultural identities, generally merits significantly more study (Salil Benegal et al., 2022). Much of the empirical work in climate change, draws from survey pools that are not nationally representative and generally, have predominantly white recipient pools (Rode et. al, 2021). Secondly, much of the empirical work on climate change tends to focus on climate change beliefs but some scholars have found evidence that racial differences may be more pronounced with respect to attitudes towards climate change policy. With these general limitations in mind, it is important to read the highlighted findings below with reasonable skepticism, and perhaps consider the following discussion as offering a series of starting points for more comprehensive research on the relationship between racial and cultural identities, and climate change attitudes and beliefs.
3.3.3.2 Key findings in literature on race, cultural identity, and climate change attitudes
Existing research suggests that the climate change attitudes are less polarized among non-White groups. Schuldt et al.(2016) ran a OLS regression analysis on survey data from the Ipsos KnowledgePanel survey and found that conservative ideology was almost twice as predictive of climate change personal belief (bwhite = -.52, bnon-white = -0.28)1 likelihood of perceiving scientific consensus on the issue (interaction between political ideology and perception of consensus Whites: χ2 (1351) = 204.16, versus non-Whites: χ2 (661) = 44.97), and supporting government intervention for Whites than non-Whites. Perhaps most significantly for the purposes of our discussion, Schuldt et. al - building off prior work that observed non-White liberals are less likely to identify as environmentalists due to perceived barriers to entry and low levels of acceptance in environmental groups (Taylor 2007, 2014) - also found that non-White liberals were significantly less likely to identify as environmentalists (71.8% of White liberals, versus 53.8% of non-White liberals identified as environmentalists).2 Considering this, it is worth further study to understand how the attitude and behavioral effects associated with identity as an environmentalist, vary among non-Whtie groups. These findings were reinforced in a larger dataset, in a cross-sectional analysis of US national polling data between 2008 - 2019 (Ballew et. al, 2021). Ballew et. al. find that in general, people of color “have significantly greater levels of acceptance that global warming is happening, and higher global warming risk perceptions than Whites” (Ballew et. al, 2021, 3). It is worth noting that Ballew et al. did find that issue polarization on climate change increased over time across all groups, in the decade the survey was repeated, although polarization effects remained consistently weaker among people of color than Whites.
It is possible that non-White populations have higher rates of climate change belief and higher levels of risk perception surrounding climate change. This observation is drawn from Teyton and Abramson’s work, which studied climate change attitudes among Hurricane Katrina survivors. Teyton and Abramson (2021) found exposure to Hurricane Katrina and recent flooding events and hurricanes had positive associations with climate change beliefs (OR: 8, and OR: 5.2 respectively). However white individuals (across cohorts e.g. less educated vs more educated) had significant negative associations with climate change belief (OR: 0.2). It is worth noting that the odds’ ratios across outcomes do not represent large-sized effects. Nonetheless, Teyton and Abramson found that race was found to be the only significant variable among Katrina survivors that impacted climate change belief (also tested were income, age, gender, education, influence of news and science reports, influence of friends and family). The study concludes that findings reflect the fact that among this population (Katrina survivors), race was a strong predictor of level of exposure to damage, as well as ability to recover, explaining heightened risk. As the number of climate related natural disasters’ increases risk exposure and racial dynamics merit further study.
Additional studies suggest room compelling further research on the relationship between additional socio-demographic categories and climate attitudes. The studies reviewed so far in this section leave a lot on the table with respect to racial and cultural determinants of climate attitudes. First, they do not sufficiently explore why some of the determinants we’ve explored through this volume (e.g. identity as an environmentalist) differ between racial or cultural identity. Second, they narrowly focus on race in a binary construction (White versus non-White), and do not explore different group dynamics within non-White communities that might warrant study. And finally, they tend not to consider additional socio-demographic conditions that might impact climate attitudes. However, there is available work that hints at the productive possibilities that further exploring some of these questions might open up.
For instance, Pearson et. al, find that political ideology is not a robust predictor of climate attitudes among Latinos, but familism - a “relational value reflecting a strong attachment to family and prioritization of family over self” (2021, p. 11) - is. The study runs an OLS regression for both belief and policy support on Ipsos KnowledgePanel survey data, and finds that familism significantly predicted belief certainty (b = 0.49), policy support (b = 0.33) and perceived scientific consensus (b = 0.34) among Latinos. Interestingly, their model found that no other variables, including political ideology, was a significant predictor of climate attitudes for this sample. This study should be read with a degree of skepticism. Although Hispanic and Latino respondents were oversampled, the overall size of the sample was small (n = 202) and the only analytical tool deployed was OLS, so it is possible that the effect size is, in truth, likely far smaller than the headline finding suggests. That being said, this study hints at an interesting avenue for further research: it is possible that the relevant individual and behavioral predictors we’ve suggested, may potentially need to be nuanced by socio-demographic category.
Another interesting and more unique study in Australia, studied the impact of religious identity on climate belief. Morrison et al., (2015) find that overall, religious affiliation was a far weaker predictor of climate attitudes than other socio-demographic indicators like age, education level, or race. However, in an ordinal regression model that controlled for attitudes and other socio-demographics, being Buddhist had a significant but small effect on the level of climate change concern. It would not be prudent to draw too large a conclusion from this study but it does prompt a discussion around the potential relationship between religious adherence and values that might impact climate change attitudes that have been discussed throughout this volume.
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