New data from the re-launch of the CAST Data Portal: Public views on climate, drawn from four years of research on public climate perceptions from the UK, Brazil, China and Sweden, reveals that public concern about climate change is still high and people are supportive of urgent action.
From 2020-2023, CAST conducted a set of global surveys with over 15,500 (adult) participants from the UK, Brazil, China and Sweden to better understand public opinion on climate action. In our research, we discovered that a large majority of respondents from across borders, age groups and financial backgrounds are highly concerned about climate change and supportive of urgent action.
What people think matters. Public perceptions and attitudes have an important influence on climate decision-making and the delivery of climate targets. Understanding how people perceive climate change and climate action is therefore an important focus for us as a team at CAST.
This includes perceptions of climate change, willingness to engage in low-carbon lifestyles and policy support, as well as perceptions of trust and responsibility for climate action. The data portal provides a comprehensive look at public perceptions of climate change and climate action and will serve as a useful tool for those who want to gain an in-depth understanding and apply it to their own work.
The CAST Data Portal allows for exploration of views across time, and countries and is broken down by sociodemographic variables (e.g. age, gender, income, political orientation).
Key findings from the CAST Data Portal
People are worried about climate change and believe urgent action is needed
- Large majorities in all four countries say they are already feeling the effects of climate change.
- Across all four countries, a majority of people think addressing climate change is highly or extremely urgent.
- This is consistent across the four years we conducted the survey.
Majorities in all four countries are prepared to rethink some of their unsustainable consumption and transport habits
- On average, people in all four countries are more willing to take climate action in 2023 than they were in 2020.
- Across all four countries, a majority of people support insulation subsidies, product regulation and information to help them lead less carbon-intensive lives.
- Whilst few people support increasing the price of meat products, a majority of people in all four countries think that they should reduce their meat consumption
There is support for the Paris Agreement, but low trust in climate leadership by governments
- Across all four countries, support for the Paris Agreement remains high, with 3 in 5 to 4 in 5 people wanting their country to be part of the agreement made in 2015.
- Whilst large majorities in all four countries think that it is the government’s responsibility to reduce the risk of climate change, only about a third of people trust their government to address the issue (with the exception of China).
The design of the CAST Data Portal was led by CAST Deputy Director Dr Christina Demski in collaboration with Dr Kat Steentjes, Associate Director Prof Wouter Poortinga and the wider CAST team.
We invite you to explore the data and get in touch to tell us how it’s been useful for your work (or how we could improve it), if you want to find out more about the methodology and findings from the work, please contact us via info@cast.ac.uk.
CAST Deputy Director Dr Christina Demski, lead creator of the CAST Data Portal relaunch, shares her view on the importance of its findings:
“What is particularly exciting about this data portal is that we have been able to include a diverse set of questions not only covering people’s views on climate change generally but also their support for policies and their willingness and intention to engage in various low-carbon behaviours, as well as some indicators of trust. I think one of the outstanding findings is that public concerns about climate change are not going away even in the face of lots of other challenges such as Covid-19 or the cost-of-living crisis.”
Dr Kat Steentjes, a CAST Associate on the project, adds:
“The CAST Data Portal is a valuable tool to make our research findings more accessible and transparent to anyone who is interested in climate change, public perceptions, low carbon lifestyle choices and where the public stands on these topics. Far too often data researchers collect stays hidden away and unused. CAST is using a lot of tools to avoid that – which is very exciting, and we hope this will allow more exchanges between academics, people working on climate change and citizens.”
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