The role of race and ethnicity in climate change polarization: evidence from a U.S. national survey experiment

Research suggests that public divides on climate change may often be rooted in identity processes, driven in part by a motivation to associate with others with similar political and ideological views. In a large split-ballot national survey experiment of 2041 U.S. adults, we explored the role of a non-partisan identity—racial/ethnic majority andminority status—in climate change opinion, in addition to respondents’ political orientation (i.e., ideology and party affiliation). Specifically, we examined respondents’ climate beliefs and policy support, identification with groups that support environmental causes (Benvironmentalists^), and the sensitivity of these beliefs to other factors known to predict issue polarization (political orientation and issue framing). Results revealed that across all opinion metrics, non-Whites’ views were less politically polarized than those of Whites and were unaffected by exposure to different ways of framing the issue (as Bglobal warming^ versus Bclimate change^). Moreover, non-Whites were reliably less likely to self-identify as environmentalists compared to Whites, despite expressing existence beliefs and support for regulating greenhouse gases at levels comparable to Whites. These findings suggest that racial and ethnic identities can shape core climate change beliefs in previously overlooked ways. We consider implications for public outreach and climate science advocacy. As climate change has come to be widely accepted as a social problem (Shaman et al. 2013), research exploring the role of group dynamics in climate beliefs and policy support has proliferated in recent years. Much of this work has focused on political orientation. In the United States, where climate issues have been highly politicized for more than a decade (Krosnick et al. 2000), numerous studies demonstrate that conservatives and Republicans report less concern about climate change and lower support for mitigation policies relative to liberals and Democrats (McCright and Dunlap 2011b; see also Hamilton 2011). Comparatively fewer studies have investigated how identities beyond political orientation shape public Climatic Change DOI 10.1007/s10584-016-1631-3 * Jonathon P. Schuldt [email protected] 1 Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA 2 Pomona College, Claremont, CA, USA opinion on climate change (see Bliuc et al. 2015; Pearson and Schuldt 2015; Pearson et al. 2016), a surprising omission given that members of disadvantaged groups—including racial and ethnic minorities, the elderly, and the poor—experience negative environmental impacts at disproportionately greater levels, which may impact how they process environmental risks (Mohai 2008). Moreover, given current projections that the U.S. is on track to become a majority-minority nation by 2050 (US Census Bureau 2010) and with similar projections for Europe and Australasia (UN Development Programme 2009), understanding how race and ethnicity shape climate engagement in pluralistic societies is increasingly critical for understanding how large and growing segments of the public engage with the issue. Amid these shifting demographics, the present study considers the ways that racial/ethnic minority versus majority status shapes public opinion on climate change as well as related social perceptions, including identification as an environmentalist and perceptions of the beliefs of scientists, variables that are attracting growing attention among social scientists and policy experts. Social scientists have long acknowledged the fundamental human motivation to behave in ways that signal and maintain one’s acceptance as a valued group member (e.g., Goffman 1959; Tajfel and Turner 1979). In the U.S., Whites and racial and ethnic minorities have been found to differ on the importance they attach to their racial/ethnic identification, with minorities showing greater preference for pluralistic identities that recognize their groups’ distinctiveness within mainstream society (Dovidio et al. 2005). In addition, research suggests that minority racial and ethnic identification predicts support for a range of national policy issues (e.g., education policy, unemployment spending), over-and-above socioeconomic factors (Chong and Rogers 2005; Kinder and Winter 2001). Moreover, subgroup concerns and a sense of shared fate can exert a stronger influence on non-Whites’ political mobilization and policy support than party affiliation (e.g., Democrat vs. Republican) and political ideology (liberal vs. conservative; Kinder and Sanders 1996). Thus, when it comes to climate change, members of minority groups may be relatively more motivated by subgroup concerns—such as their greater susceptibility to environmental hazards and negative climate impacts—as opposed to more general values-related orientations such as political ideology and party affiliation that are widely assumed to guide public opinion on this issue. Indeed, previous studies have found that, compared to U.S. Whites, non-Whites show greater levels of risk perception and concern about climate change (Flynn et al. 1994; Leiserowitz and Akerlof 2010; McCright 2008; Speiser and Krygsman 2014), findings that have been interpreted by climate scholars (McCright and Dunlap 2011a) in light of the literature on the Bwhite male^ effect in the risk literature, which documents lower risk perceptions among this group (as compared to non-Whites and women) across a variety of risk domains (Finucane et al. 2000; Kahan et al. 2007; Palmer 2003). In the present study, we build on these past efforts by focusing specifically on the perspectives of racial/ethnic minorities. In particular, we hypothesized that the unique concerns of minority relative to majority group members may be reflected in a weaker role of political orientation as a predictor of the climate beliefs of U.S. non-Whites as compared to Whites.