Informing Public Perceptions About Climate Change: A 'Mental Models' Approach

Public Concern about Water Safety, Weather, and Climate: Insights from the World Risk Poll

Water safety refers to the quality of one's drinking water and whether it lacks dangerous contaminants. Limited access to safe water is projected to impact approximately 5 billion people worldwide by 2050. Climate change and worsening severe weather events pose increasing threats to global water safety. However, people may not perceive links between climate change and water safety, potentially undermining their willingness to implement behaviors that improve water safety. Existing studies on water safety risk perceptions have mostly been conducted in single-country contexts, which limits researchers' ability to make cross-national comparisons. Here, we assessed the extent to which people's severe weather concern and climate change concern predict their water safety concern. Our analyses used survey data from the 142-country 2019 Lloyd's Register Foundation World Risk Poll, including 21 low-income and 34 lower-middle-income countries. In mixed-effects models, severe weather concern was significantly more predictive of water safety concern than was climate change concern, although both resulted in positive associations. Worldwide, this finding was robust, insensitive to key model specifications and countries' varying protection against unsafe drinking water. We suggest communicators and policymakers improve messaging about water safety and other environmental threats by explaining how they are impacted by worsening severe weather.

Key topics in pandemic health risk communication: A qualitative study of expert opinions and knowledge

Background

Science communication can provide people with more accurate information on pandemic health risks by translating complex scientific topics into language that helps people make more informed choices on how to protect themselves and others. During pandemics, experts in medicine, science, public health, and communication are important sources of knowledge for science communication. This study uses the COVID-19 pandemic to explore these experts’ opinions and knowledge of what to communicate to the public during a pandemic. The research question is: What are the key topics to communicate to the public about health risks during a pandemic?

Method

We purposively sampled 13 experts in medicine, science, public health, and communication for individual interviews, with a range of different types of knowledge of COVID-19 risk and communication at the national, regional and hospital levels in Norway. The interview transcripts were coded and analysed inductively in a qualitative thematic analysis.

Results

The study’s findings emphasise three central topics pertaining to communication about pandemic health risk during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Norway: 1) how the virus enters the human body and generates disease; 2) how to protect oneself and others from being infected; and 3) pandemic health risk for the individual and the society.

Conclusion

The key topics emerging from the expert interviews relate to concepts originating from multiple disciplinary fields, and can inform frameworks for interprofessional communication about health risks during a pandemic. The study highlights the complexity of communicating pandemic messages, due to scientific uncertainty, fear of risk amplification, and heterogeneity in public health and scientific literacy. The study contributes with insight into the complex communication processes of pandemic health risk communication.

A Decision-Centered Method to Evaluate Natural Hazards Decision Aids by Interdisciplinary Research Teams

There is a growing number of decision aids made available to the general public by those working on hazard and disaster management. When based on high-quality scientific studies across disciplines and designed to provide a high level of usability and trust, decision aids become more likely to improve the quality of hazard risk management and response decisions. Interdisciplinary teams have a vital role to play in this process, ensuring the scientific validity and effectiveness of a decision aid across the physical science, social science, and engineering dimensions of hazard awareness, option identification, and the decisions made by individuals and communities. Often, these aids are not evaluated before being widely distributed, which could improve their impact, due to a lack of dedicated resources and guidance on how to systematically do so. In this Perspective, we present a decision-centered method for evaluating the impact of hazard decision aids on decisionmaker preferences and choice during the design and development phase, drawing from the social and behavioral sciences and a value of information framework to inform the content, complexity, format, and overall evaluation of the decision aid. The first step involves quantifying the added value of the information contained in the decision aid. The second involves identifying the extent to which the decision aid is usable. Our method can be applied to a variety of hazards and disasters, and will allow interdisciplinary teams to more effectively evaluate the extent to which an aid can inform and improve decision making.

Introduction to the Special Issue on Climate Ethics: Uncertainty, Values and Policy

Climate change is a pressing phenomenon with huge potential ethical, legal and social policy implications. Climate change gives rise to intricate moral and policy issues as it involves contested science, uncertainty and risk. In order to come to scientifically and morally justified, as well as feasible, policies, targeting climate change requires an interdisciplinary approach. This special issue will identify the main challenges that climate change poses from social, economic, methodological and ethical perspectives by focusing on the complex interrelations between uncertainty, values and policy in this context. This special issue brings together scholars from economics, social sciences and philosophy in order to address these challenges.