Taylor, A orcid.org/0000-0002-8949-1234, Dessai, S orcid.org/0000-0002-7879-9364 and Bruine de Bruin, W orcid.org/0000-0002-1601-789X (2019) Public priorities and expectation of climate change impacts in the United Kingdom. Journal of Risk Research, 22 (2). pp. 150-160. ISSN 1366-9877
Abstract
Irrespective of the success of climate mitigation efforts, societies worldwide face the challenge of adapting to a changing climate. In this paper, we examine UK residents’ expectations of future threats and opportunities associated with climate change impacts, along with willingness to prioritise different climate change impacts for investment. Using a national survey (n = 2007), we report on three main findings. First, UK residents tend to expect threats related to flooding and wet weather to be more likely and concerning than heat extremes or opportunities. Second, UK residents’ expectations of climate change impacts do not align with expert assessments, especially showing lower estimates of heat-related threats as compared to experts. Third, willingness to allocate resources to potential climate change impacts tends to be more strongly associated with anticipated concern should they occur than climate change belief or the expected likelihood of them occurring. We discuss the implications of our findings for policies and communications about climate change adaptation in the UK and elsewhere.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Risk perception, risk expectations, climate change adaptation, United Kingdom |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Business (Leeds) > Management Division (LUBS) (Leeds) > Management Division Decision Research (LUBS) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Sustainability Research Institute (SRI) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number ESRC ES/L00805X/1 National Science Foundation 47.075 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 27 Apr 2017 16:05 |
Last Modified: | 23 Jun 2023 22:28 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/13669877.2017.1351479 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:115646 |