Generation of change? South African attitudes towards climate change in comparative perspective

ABSTRACT

The risks posed by climate change have become increasingly apparent. In response, the South African government has introduced various policy measures, reflecting a commitment to transitioning to a low-carbon economy. Successfully navigating this transition requires policy processes to take account of individual preferences, concerns, and lived realities. Yet a significant knowledge gap remains. Data from the South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS, 2017) are used to test aspects of the Stern’s value-belief-norm model. Climate beliefs, climate concern and personal responsibility are profiled. The strongest predictors of climate concern are a belief in the reality of climate change, expectations of negative impacts, and the salience afforded to climate change. In turn, climate concern, attribution scepticism, and impact scepticism are most likely to determine feelings of personal responsibility to reduce climate change. These findings have implications for climate change communication and interventions to minimise the human development consequences of climate change.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• value-belief-norm model
• survey
• public opinion
• South Africa

Acknowledgements

The authors express a special vote of thanks to Mr Leluma Matooane and Ms. Kogilam Govender of DSI. They are grateful to the European Social Survey ERIC team for permission to replicate their survey module, and to the ESS ERIC director, Prof. Rory Fitzgerald, and the lead module designer, Prof. Wouter Poortinga, for their encouragement and support. All opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors alone and not those of any other person or organisation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://www.environment.gov.za/mediarelease/southafricasignsparisagreementonclimate.

2 https://www.environment.gov.za/mediarelease/southafricasignsparisagreementonclimate.

3 https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/south-africa/.

4 Those answering on the top half of the scale (values of 6 to 10) in response to the question ‘How good or bad do you think the impact of climate change will be on people across the world?’ were classified as viewing climate change as positive.

5 This was based on an environmental activism model which looked at about collective benefits, collective outcomes as well as the costs versus benefits of activism. For further discussion, see Lubell (2002).

Additional information

Funding

The authors acknowledge the financial support of the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) and National Research Foundation (NRF) for the fielding of the climate change and energy module in the SASAS series. They also acknowledge the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development, based at the University of the Witwatersrand, for financial support in the preparation of this article [grant number SIP2020-CCHD-3].