Steiner, Mark E

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In the Path of the Flood: Exploring Carbon-Intensive Employment and Coastal Geography as Motivators of U.S. Climate Change Denial
(2020-04-02) Steiner, Mark E
This thesis uses multivariate regressions of the ANES 2016 Dataset to test whether working in a carbon-intensive industry affects belief in climate change. It also uses the same dataset to test whether living in an area that would see increased flooding and displacement under a climate change scenario can affect the same attitudes. Additionally, it presents crosstabulations of climate skeptics and non-skeptics by party preference, education, and turnout habits. I find that working in a carbon-intensive industry does not reduce a respondent’s likelihood to report belief in climate science. Similarly, living in a coastal area that is likely to see significant disruption in even an optimistic climate change scenario does not affect belief in climate change. Instead, the control variables of partisanship, education, and income are highly significant predictors of climate skepticism. Lastly, I find through the use of a survey mode variable that conducting the survey online rather than in-person produces a significant increase in climate-skeptic responses, providing evidence that climate skepticism elicits a kind of Bradley Effect in individuals.