Perceptions of climate change threat across 121 nations: The role of individual and national wealth

Abstract

The post-materialist hypothesis suggests that perceptions of climate change threat will be greatest among the most affluent individuals and nations. In contrast, we present a precarity hypothesis: that perceptions of threat will be greatest among the most economically vulnerable individuals and nations, who are least equipped to adapt to a changing climate. To examine these predictions, we analyzed Lloyd's Register Foundation World Risk Poll (2021), which asked 280,000 individuals from 121 countries to indicate the degree of threat they believed climate change presented to their country in the next 20 years. Overall, no relationship was found between nation-level affluence – as measured by the Human Development Index (HDI) – and perceived climate change threat. Threat shared a small positive association with individual-level income, but an even stronger positive relationship with subjective financial distress. This relationship between subjective financial distress and climate change threat was particularly strong in low-HDI countries. Together, the data show little evidence for the post-materialist hypothesis and are more consistent with a precarity hypothesis.