Anthony Leiserowitz
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 1616404 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Anthony Leiserowitz |
| NOMBRES | Anthony |
| APELLIDO | Leiserowitz |
| FIRMA | LEISEROWITZ A |
| AFILIACIONES | Yale University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5349-409X |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 78 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 564 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 78 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2004 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 11 |
A registered report megastudy on the persuasiveness of the most-cited climate messages
The Role of Emotion in Climate Change Communication
Extreme weather events are becoming increasingly frequent and severe worldwide. Emotional messages might be persuasive in communicating this information, but it remains unclear whether message efficacy depends more on emotional content or delivery. In a pre-registered experiment (N = 3,463), participants were randomly assigned to listen to one of seven audio messages: a control message or one of six messages on climate change’s impact on extreme …
Positive Images of Heat Waves Reduce the Effects of Messages About Extreme Heat among U.S. Adults
As climate change intensifies, extreme heat events are becoming more frequent and severe, posing growing risks to human health, ecosystems, and infrastructure. In a large-scale survey experiment (N = 3,960 U.S. adults) we examine how the emotional valence of imagery – negative, neutral, or positive – in social media-based news about heat waves influences worry about heat waves, beliefs about climate change’s role in extreme heat, and willingness …
Vulnerability outpaces climate worry in US frontline communities
Predicting the Performance of Facebook Advertisements About Climate Change Using Self-report Data
Social media has become an important medium for climate change communication, where sponsored content can be delivered to specific audiences. However, studying message effects on social media platforms has limitations and therefore scholars often rely on surveys and controlled experiments, which can lack external validity. Here, we use survey methods to predict the real-world performance of advertisements on Facebook. We found that a 10 percentag…
Testing the Durability of Persuasion From Moral Appeals About Renewable Energy
Research shows that opinions rooted in moral justifications may be more stable over time. This suggests that communicators could create more durable persuasion by adding explicit moral claims (i.e., stating that the issue is a matter of right vs. wrong) to persuasive messages. Here, using animated videos about the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, we conducted a three-stage longitudinal experiment ( N = 4,488) to test whether mess…
Gender, Development, and Recognition of Anthropogenic Climate Change
Communicating the Links between Climate Change and Heat Waves with the Climate Shift Index
Extreme weather, including heat waves, poses a significant threat to ecosystems and human health. As global temperatures continue to rise, the frequency and severity of heat waves will increase. Because of this, communicating heat-related risks to the public is increasingly important. One commonly used communication tool is the Climate Shift Index (CSI), which establishes how much more likely an extreme weather event, such as a heat wave, has bee…
Americans’ support for climate justice
Climate change messages can promote support for climate action globally
Environmental Literature as Persuasion
Literary works of fiction about climate change are becoming more common and more popular among critics and readers. While much research has indicated the persuasive effectiveness of narrative storytelling in general, empirical research has not yet tested the effects of reading climate fiction. This paper reports results from the first experimental study to test the immediate and delayed impacts of climate fiction on readers’ beliefs and attitudes…
Exposure to Scientific Consensus Does Not Cause Psychological Reactance
In a recent article, Ma, Dixon, and Hmielowski (2019. Psychological Reactance from Reading Basic Facts on Climate Change: The Role of Prior Views and Political Identification. Environmental Communication, 13(1), 71–86) explore whether scientific consensus messages activate psychological reactance. They find no main effect of the consensus message on psychological reactance, but a subsequent moderation analysis appears to show reactance among audi…
Evaluating the Terms Americans Use to Refer to “Carbon Emissions”
The effectiveness of climate change communication depends in part on how people perceive common terms used to describe key climate concepts. In a mixed methods study (N = 2859), we examined affect, top-of-mind associations, beliefs, policy support, and behavioral intentions elicited by terms communicators colloquially use to refer to the gases responsible for climate change: greenhouse gas emissions, carbon emissions, and carbon pollution. Open-e…
Sociodemographic Factors Associated with Heatwave Risk Perception in the United States
Extreme heat events are one of the deadliest weather-related hazards in the United States and are increasing in frequency and severity as a result of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Further, some subpopulations may be more vulnerable than others because of social, economic, and political factors that create disparities in hazard impacts and responses. Vulnerability is also affected by risk perceptions, which can influence protective behav…
Information about the human causes of global warming influences causal attribution, concern, and policy support related to global warming
Scientists know that human activities, primarily fossil fuel combustion, are causing Earth’s temperature to increase. Yet in 2021, only 60% of the US population understood that human activities are the primary cause of global warming. We experimentally test whether information about the human causes of global warming influences Americans’ beliefs and concerns about global warming and support for climate policies. We find that communicating inform…
Communicating the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change
Prior research has demonstrated that communicating the scientific consensus that human-caused climate change is happening is an effective way to increase public understanding and engagement with the issue. However, less is known about (1) how persuasive this message is to oppositional audiences, (2) how long message effects last over time, and (3) what factors predict whether such effects last. We address these questions in a two-wave longitudina…
Measuring Americans’ Support for Adapting to ‘Climate Change’ or ‘Extreme Weather’
Climate communicators can use the terms ‘climate change’ or ‘extreme weather’ to describe climate change adaptation strategies. However, the terms might differentially affect individuals’ support for those strategies. We examined Americans’ (N = 1,558) endorsement of climate change adaptation behaviors and policies based on whether they were described using ‘climate change’ or ‘extreme weather.’ Republicans’ endorsement of some adaptation behavio…
Change in US state-level public opinion about climate change
Public attitudes toward climate change influence climate and energy policies and guide individual mitigation and adaptation behaviors. Over the last decade, as scientific certainty about the causes and impacts of, and solutions to the climate crisis has increased, cities, states, and regions in the United States have pursued diverse policy strategies. Yet, our understanding of how Americans’ climate views are changing remains largely limited to n…
The generational divide over climate change among American evangelicals
As urgency grows to address global warming, younger generations can play a strategic role in mobilizing communities that have generally been more opposed to climate action and policy, such as political and religious conservatives in the United States. American evangelical Protestants—and white evangelicals in particular—are the largest religious group in the U.S. and also the most skeptical of climate science. There is growing interest, however, …
Does personal climate change mitigation behavior influence collective behavior? Experimental evidence of no spillover in the United States
Global Warming’s Six Americas
The Greta Thunberg Effect
Despite Greta Thunberg's popularity, research has yet to investigate her impact on the public's willingness to take collective action on climate change. Using cross‐sectional data from a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults ( N = 1,303), we investigate the “Greta Thunberg Effect, ” or whether exposure to Greta Thunberg predicts collective efficacy and intentions to engage in collective action. We find that those who are more familiar w…
Shifting Republican views on climate change through targeted advertising
Hot dry days increase perceived experience with global warming
Mask-Wearing Increased After a Government Recommendation
On April 3 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that all Americans wear face masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The announcement came during the fielding of a large, nationally-representative survey (N = 3,933) of Americans’ COVID-19-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors, providing an opportunity to measure the impact of the CDC’s recommendation on public reported mask wearing and buying behavior…
Climate on Cable
This study examines climate change coverage on the three major cable news channels and assesses the relationship between viewership of these channels and beliefs about global warming. Evidence from a content analysis of climate change coverage on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC during 2007 and 2008 demonstrates that Fox takes a more dismissive tone toward climate change than CNN and MSNBC. Fox also interviews a greater ratio of climate change doubters t…
Communication and mental processes
Quota sampling using Facebook advertisements
Researchers in different social science disciplines have successfully used Facebook to recruit subjects for their studies. However, such convenience samples are not generally representative of the population. We developed and validated a new quota sampling method to recruit respondents using Facebook advertisements. Additionally, we published an R package to semi-automate this quota sampling process using the Facebook Marketing API. To test the m…
Who remembers a hot summer or a cold winter? The asymmetric effect of beliefs about global warming on perceptions of local climate conditions in the U.S
American evangelicals and global warming
Does socioeconomic status moderate the political divide on climate change? The roles of education, income, and individualism
Cross‐National Comparisons of Image Associations with “Global Warming” and “Climate Change” Among Laypeople in the United States of America and Great Britain1
Climate change poses significant risks to societies worldwide, yet governmental responses differ greatly on either side of the North Atlantic. Risk perception studies have shown that citizens in the United States and Great Britain have similar risk perceptions of climate change: it is considered a distant threat, of limited personal importance. Engaging the public on this issue is thus challenging. Affect, the positive or negative evaluation of a…
Public opinion on climate change
Does the state of the economy condition public concern for the environment? Scholars have long argued that environmental preferences decline during economic downturns as individuals prioritize short-term economic needs over longer-term environmental concerns. Yet, this assumption has rarely been subjected to rigorous empirical scrutiny at the individual level. The presumed link between economic and environmental preferences is revisited, using th…
Climategate, Public Opinion, and the Loss of Trust
Nationally representative surveys conducted in 2008 and 2010 found significant declines in Americans' climate change beliefs, risk perceptions, and trust in scientists. Drawing upon the Social Amplification of Risk Framework, this analysis empirically examines the impact of "climategate"-an international scandal resulting from the unauthorized release of emails between climate scientists in England and United States. The results demonstrate that …
Hot dry days increase perceived experience with global warming
Scientific agreement can neutralize politicization of facts
From Red to Green
Identifying the most important predictors of support for climate policy in the United States
Reducing global warming will require enacting strong climate policies, which is unlikely to happen without public support. While prior research has identified varied predictors of climate change policy support, it is unclear which predictors are strongest for the American electorate as a whole, and which predictors are strongest for Democrats and Republicans. In a nationally representative sample of registered voters ( n = 2063), we use relative …
Detecting local environmental change
Anthropogenic climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events (e.g. flooding, heat waves, and wildfires). As a result, it is often reasoned that as more individuals experience unusual weather patterns that are consistent with changing climate conditions, the more their concern about global warming will increase, and the more motivated they will become to respond and address the problem effectively. Social science…
Extending the Impacts of Hostile Media Perceptions
Researchers recently have begun to examine how hostile media perceptions may promote discursive activities aimed at correcting the media’s perceived negative influence. We use nationally representative survey data to test a moderated-mediation model that finds that hostile media perceptions significantly affect support for climate mitigation policies through the mediator of discussion and that the link between discussion and policy support is mod…
A Social Identity Approach to Engaging Christians in the Issue of Climate Change
Using two nationally representative surveys (total N = 2,544) and two experiments (total N = 1,620), we investigate a social identity approach to engaging Christians in the issue of climate change. Results show Christian Americans say “protecting God’s creation” is a top reason for wanting to reduce global warming. An exploratory experiment and a preregistered replication tested a “stewardship frame” message with Christian Americans and found sig…
The Experience of Consensus
Research on the gateway belief model indicates that communicating the scientific consensus on global warming acts as a “gateway” to other beliefs and support for action. We test whether a video conveying the scientific consensus on global warming is more effective than a text transcript with the same information. Results show that the video was significantly more effective than the transcript in increasing people’s perception of scientific agreem…
Does personal climate change mitigation behavior influence collective behavior? Experimental evidence of no spillover in the United States
The legacy of climategate
In mid‐November 2009, emails were removed without authorization from a University of East Anglia server and posted to the internet; within 24 h an international scandal was born—alleging fraud by leading climate scientists—which almost immediately became known as climategate. Multiple investigations concluded that no fraud or scientific misconduct had occurred. Despite the exonerations, however, the email controversy has had impacts, both negativ…
Climate change messages can promote support for climate action globally
Is global warming affecting the weather?’ Evidence for increased attribution beliefs among coastal versus inland US residents
Increasingly, researchers studying public beliefs about global warming have turned to the question of whether individuals have begun to perceive changes to their local climate conditions and to what extent they attribute these changes to the phenomenon of global warming. Perceptions of particular types of extreme events, i.e. extreme heat and droughts, have attracted the most attention, whereas the possible effects of place (such as proximity to …
Framing Peak Petroleum as a Public Health Problem
Between December 2009 and January 2010, we conducted a nationally representative telephone survey of US adults (n = 1001; completion rate = 52.9%) to explore perceptions of risks associated with peak petroleum. We asked respondents to assess the likelihood that oil prices would triple over the next 5 years and then to estimate the economic and health consequences of that event. Nearly half (48%) indicated that oil prices were likely to triple, ca…
Day After Tomorrow
Additional informationNotes on contributorsAnthony A. LeiserowitzAnthony A. Leiserowitz is a research scientist at Decision Research, Inc. and an adjunct professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon in Eugene. His research focuses on environmental risk perception, decisionmaking, and behavior. Leiserowitz may be reached at (541) 485-2400 or by e-mail at [email protected]. The author thanks his colleagues at Decision Research, …
What is Sustainable Development? Goals, Indicators, Values, and Practice
(2005). What is Sustainable Development? Goals, Indicators, Values, and Practice. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development: Vol. 47, No. 3, pp. 8-21.
American Risk Perceptions
Public risk perceptions can fundamentally compel or constrain political, economic, and social action to address particular risks. Public support or opposition to climate policies (e.g., treaties, regulations, taxes, subsidies) will be greatly influenced by public perceptions of the risks and dangers posed by global climate change. This article describes results from a national study (2003) that examined the risk perceptions and connotative meanin…
Sustainability Values, Attitudes, and Behaviors
This review surveys five major efforts to identify and declare values essential to global sustainability; describes empirical trends (as measured by multinational and global-scale surveys) in values, attitudes, and behaviors related to human and economic development, the environment, and driving forces (population, affluence, technology, and entitlements); and describes empirical trends in attitudes toward contextual values that condition sustain…
Cross‐National Comparisons of Image Associations with “Global Warming” and “Climate Change” Among Laypeople in the United States of America and Great Britain1
Climate change poses significant risks to societies worldwide, yet governmental responses differ greatly on either side of the North Atlantic. Risk perception studies have shown that citizens in the United States and Great Britain have similar risk perceptions of climate change: it is considered a distant threat, of limited personal importance. Engaging the public on this issue is thus challenging. Affect, the positive or negative evaluation of a…
Communication and mental processes
Creating a Climate for Change
The need for effective communication, public outreach and education to increase support for policy, collective action and behaviour change is ever present, and is perhaps most pressing in the context of anthropogenic climate change. This book is the first to take a comprehensive look at communication and social change specifically targeted to climate change. It is a unique collection of ideas examining the challenges associated with communicating…
Communication and Marketing As Climate Change–Intervention Assets
Finding the Teachable Moment
This paper investigates how the mass media may influence information-seeking behavior through an analysis of how the release of the movie The Day After Tomorrow, a fictional depiction of global warming causing catastrophic natural disasters, changed the information-seeking behavior of the public on global warming related websites. A "teachable moment" of elevated information-seeking activity was found to extend from 10 days before the release dat…
From Red to Green
Public Perceptions of Climate Change as a Human Health Risk
We used data from nationally representative surveys conducted in the United States, Canada and Malta between 2008 and 2009 to answer three questions: Does the public believe that climate change poses human health risks, and if so, are they seen as current or future risks? Whose health does the public think will be harmed? In what specific ways does the public believe climate change will harm human health? When asked directly about the potential i…
Attention to Science/Environment News Positively Predicts and Attention to Political News Negatively Predicts Global Warming Risk Perceptions and Policy Support
Contemporary science and environmental news coverage of global warming increasingly portrays scientific consensus. Political news coverage of global warming, however, typically portrays controversy. We hypothesize that attention to science and environmental news is associated with beliefs more consistent with the global warming science and higher risk perceptions, and that the opposite is true of attention to political news. Furthermore, we hypot…
Support for climate policy and societal action are linked to perceptions about scientific agreement
Framing Peak Petroleum as a Public Health Problem
Between December 2009 and January 2010, we conducted a nationally representative telephone survey of US adults (n = 1001; completion rate = 52.9%) to explore perceptions of risks associated with peak petroleum. We asked respondents to assess the likelihood that oil prices would triple over the next 5 years and then to estimate the economic and health consequences of that event. Nearly half (48%) indicated that oil prices were likely to triple, ca…
Climate on Cable
This study examines climate change coverage on the three major cable news channels and assesses the relationship between viewership of these channels and beliefs about global warming. Evidence from a content analysis of climate change coverage on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC during 2007 and 2008 demonstrates that Fox takes a more dismissive tone toward climate change than CNN and MSNBC. Fox also interviews a greater ratio of climate change doubters t…
The Rise of Global Warming Skepticism
This article explores how affective image associations to global warming have changed over time. Four nationally representative surveys of the American public were conducted between 2002 and 2010 to assess public global warming risk perceptions, policy preferences, and behavior. Affective images (positive or negative feelings and cognitive representations) were collected and content analyzed. The results demonstrate a large increase in “naysayer”…
Weather, Climate, and (Especially) Society
The relationship between personal experience and belief in the reality of global warming
The legacy of climategate
In mid‐November 2009, emails were removed without authorization from a University of East Anglia server and posted to the internet; within 24 h an international scandal was born—alleging fraud by leading climate scientists—which almost immediately became known as climategate. Multiple investigations concluded that no fraud or scientific misconduct had occurred. Despite the exonerations, however, the email controversy has had impacts, both negativ…
If They Like You, They Learn from You
Local television (TV) weathercasters are a potentially promising source of climate education, in that weather is the primary reason viewers watch local TV news, large segments of the public trust TV weathercasters as a source of information about global warming, and extreme weather events are increasingly common (Leiserowitz et al.; U.S. Global Change Research Program). In an online experiment conducted in two South Carolina cities (Greenville, n…
An attack on science? Media use, trust in scientists, and perceptions of global warming
There is a growing divide in how conservatives and liberals in the USA understand the issue of global warming. Prior research suggests that the American public's reliance on partisan media contributes to this gap. However, researchers have yet to identify intervening variables to explain the relationship between media use and public opinion about global warming. Several studies have shown that trust in scientists is an important heuristic many pe…
The Role of Emotion in Global Warming Policy Support and Opposition
Prior research has found that affect and affective imagery strongly influence public support for global warming. This article extends this literature by exploring the separate influence of discrete emotions. Utilizing a nationally representative survey in the United States, this study found that discrete emotions were stronger predictors of global warming policy support than cultural worldviews, negative affect, image associations, or sociodemogr…
Who remembers a hot summer or a cold winter? The asymmetric effect of beliefs about global warming on perceptions of local climate conditions in the U.S
American evangelicals and global warming
Climategate, Public Opinion, and the Loss of Trust
Nationally representative surveys conducted in 2008 and 2010 found significant declines in Americans' climate change beliefs, risk perceptions, and trust in scientists. Drawing upon the Social Amplification of Risk Framework, this analysis empirically examines the impact of "climategate"-an international scandal resulting from the unauthorized release of emails between climate scientists in England and United States. The results demonstrate that …
Climate Change Communication and Perception (65 obras) · Climate change (59 obras) · Political science (55 obras) · Psychology (49 obras) · Environmental Education and Sustainability (40 obras) · Global warming (31 obras) · Perception (27 obras) · Ecology (24 obras) · Social Psychology (24 obras) · Geography (22 obras)