A Continuing Investigation and Comparison of Chinese & American Climate Change Views III

Abstract

As the world’s two largest economies and greenhouse gas polluters, China and the United States are key players in international climate change negotiations. However, public views of climate change in these nations are diverse and complex and may often be uninformed or misinformed. To better understand climate change views in the US and China, we use survey data collected in 2015 (N=7,556) and 2017 (N=7,415) to analyze responses to the question “what comes to mind when you hear the words ‘climate change’?” We manually coded open-ended responses to examine respondents’ perceptions related to the consequences of climate change, and actions or solutions to address it. We also probed who they assigned responsibility for climate change to, and what groups they projected negativity toward. Quantitative correlations will be drawn between coded open-ended responses and other variables from our survey including calculated climate change acceptance/knowledge/concern scores and support for international climate treaties. Preliminary results indicate that Chinese respondents very rarely mentioned actions, solutions, or assignment of responsibility, focusing mostly on consequences of climate change. Americans mentioned politics much more frequently than Chinese and projected negativity toward opposing groups. But they also mentioned actions or solutions to mitigate climate change.