Individual and local flooding experiences are differentially associated with subjective attribution and climate change c
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Individual and local flooding experiences are differentially associated with subjective attribution and climate change concern Charles A. Ogunbode 1
1
& Rouven Doran & Gisela Böhm
1,2
Received: 9 July 2019 / Accepted: 7 July 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract
While several studies show an association between flooding experience and climate change engagement, a few show no evidence of such a link. Here, we explore the potential that this inconsistency relates to the measurement of flooding experience in terms of individual versus local experience, and the subsumption of multiple distinct constructs within composite indicators of climate change engagement. Using national survey data from Norway, we show that individual and local flooding experiences differentially predict subjective attribution and climate change concern. People with individual flooding experience reported significantly greater climate change concern than those with local, or no, flooding experience. Subjective attribution of flooding to climate change did not differ significantly between people with individual versus local flooding experience, except among those with a rightwing political orientation where individual experience was associated with greater subjective attribution. Our findings highlight the need for careful operationalisation of flooding experience and climate change engagement in subsequent research. Keywords Flooding . Climate change . Experience . Attribution . Psychology
1 Introduction Flooding is the most common and wide-reaching natural hazard occurring across the globe. Between 1995 and 2015, over two billion people were adversely affected by floods (CRED 2015). The costs associated with flood damage worldwide are estimated at around US$40 billion dollars annually (OECD 2016). While there is robust evidence that climate change * Charles A. Ogunbode [email protected]
1
Department of Psychosocial Science, Faculty of Psychology, University of Bergen, Christiesgate 12, 5020 Bergen, Norway
2
Department of Psychology, Inland Norway University of Applied Science, Lillehammer, Lillehammer, Norway
Climatic Change
affects factors, like snowmelt and precipitation, which are key contributors to flooding (Seneviratne et al. 2012), projections for climate change-induced changes in the frequency and magnitude of flooding remain uncertain (Kundzewicz et al. 2014). Nonetheless, over the past decade, there has been sustained scholarly interest in understanding how flooding experiences affect public engagement with climate change (Whitmarsh 2008; Spence et al. 2011; Demski et al. 2017). This interest is premised on the potential that exposure to flooding events may operate as a channel for experiential processing of climate change information. Scientific information about climate change often takes the form of statistics that require cognitive effort and a degree of technical analytic competence to process. Such information is easily overshadowed by experiential information when non-experts make judgements about the
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