How well do people understand the climate impact of individual actions?
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How well do people understand the climate impact of individual actions? Seth Wynes 1
2
& Jiaying Zhao & Simon D. Donner
1
Received: 25 June 2019 / Accepted: 28 July 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract
Misunderstandings in the relative efficacy of pro-environmental behaviors may have important consequences for climate mitigation efforts. In this study, we evaluate the ability to perceive the carbon footprint associated with individual actions, known as “carbon numeracy,” in 965 members of the North American public using ranking and tradeoff questions. The questions are designed to independently assess the role of knowledge, ability to do tradeoffs, and basic numeracy skills in determining carbon numeracy. We report multiple lines of evidence suggesting that people underestimate greenhouse gas emissions associated with air travel and, to a lesser extent, meat consumption. They are also largely incapable of making tradeoffs between different actions (e.g., the number of hamburgers that would be equivalent to a trans-Atlantic flight in terms of climate impact). Concern for climate change, political orientation, and education were not significant predictors of accuracy in making tradeoffs, but basic numeracy was linked with increased accuracy. The results suggest that further education may be necessary to improve carbon numeracy by providing the public with a basic hierarchy of actions according to carbon reduction efficacy. Consumers seeking to balance their carbon budgets may benefit from external aids (e.g., carbon labels associated with actions) to guide emission-related decision-making. Keywords Carbon numeracy . Decision-making . Climate change mitigation . Pro-environmental behaviors . Air travel . Meat consumption
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-02002811-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
* Seth Wynes [email protected]
1
The Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Canada
2
Department of Psychology & Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada
Climatic Change
1 Introduction People exhibit greater willingness and intentions to perform pro-environmental behaviors that they believe are more effective in combating climate change (De Boer et al. 2016; Truelove and Parks 2012). It is therefore important that members of the public can distinguish between actions that are low or high impact for mitigating climate change. The most effective actions for reducing an individual’s greenhouse gas emissions have been ranked (Gardner and Stern 2008; Ivanova et al. 2020; Lacroix 2018; Wynes and Nicholas 2017), though important questions still remain: do people understand these rankings? Can they make tradeoffs between different actions? Attempts to improve carbon numeracy are common: educational curricula instruct students to investigate their own carbon footprints (Wynes and Nicholas
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