Is human activity driving climate change? Perspectives from Australian landholders

Abstract

Australian agriculture and the rural communities that depend upon it are expected to experience significant impacts from climate change. The recognition of the human role in climate change is central in the design and implementation of effective strategies to mitigate and adapt to its impacts. Understanding the extent to which members of the public, such as private landholders, acknowledge human-caused climate change is critical, given their role as custodians of large tracts of natural resources. Rural social benchmarking studies are a useful tool for understanding landholder values and beliefs. Here, we use a rural social benchmarking survey to examine landholder agreement regarding the extent to which humans contribute to climate change across four Australian agricultural regions. We perform hierarchical clustering analysis to determine subgroups of landholders with similar patterns of survey responses. We then evaluate this effect of cluster membership and demographic characteristics using Bayesian ordinal regression on levels of agreement with the statement “that human activities are influencing climate change.” Our findings reveal three distinct clusters based on patterns of responses to survey questions eliciting participants values beliefs and norms. Cluster membership exhibits the strongest positive influence on agreement (0.52, 95% CI: 0.37 to 0.67). This was followed by higher education levels (0.32, 95% CI: 0.22 to 0.41). Gender showed a moderately uncertain but positive influence. Years residing on the property, participant age, and property size showed very little influence, while rainfall zones showed a negative influence of-0.29 (95% CI: −0.47 to-0.12). Our results underscore the need for extension programs to consider landholder typologies based on a combination of lived experience and demographics.