Understanding the Links Between Climate Change Risk Perceptions and the Action Response to Inform Climate Services Interventions

Abstract

Understanding what motivates people to act on climate change provides an opportunity to design more effective interventions, in particular, climate services interventions, by aligning them with factors that strongly influence action. Climate change risk perceptions have been shown to underlie action on climate change. Therefore, this study performs exploratory research to understand how various determinants of risk perceptions contribute and interact to influence climate change risk perceptions and professional action on climate change in East Africa, in order to inform the context-specific design of climate services. Using data collected through a region-wide survey, a model to risk perceptions and professional action was constructed through structural equation modeling. The model elucidates the cascading effects of variables such as age, gender, education, and personal values on action. In particular, it highlights a split in motivating factors among individuals with higher levels of self-enhancing values versus those with higher levels of self-transcending values. The model also highlights the prominent role that experience of extreme weather events, psychological proximity of climate change, climate change risk perceptions, and social norms play in motivating action. The model, therefore, offers a framework for prioritizing the various factors that motivate people to take adaptation action, which, in turn, provides a basis for informing climate services development going forward.

Keywords: Action; Africa; climate change; climate services; risk perceptions.