Climate change attitudes across the rural-urban divide: What’s going on in rural America?

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Molly Burhans, Sustain IU, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN and Matthew K. Houser, Environmental Resilience Institute, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN

Background/Question/Methods
Climate change is a reality that the whole world is facing, and it presents serious consequences for all. While globally there is widespread scientific consensus that anthropogenic climate change is occurring, there is continued public discourse within certain populations denying either its existence, or the fact that it is human-caused. From past work, we know that rural and urban residency shapes individuals’ attitudes in key ways, yet there is limited research on this division in regard to climate change attitudes at the subnational level and we have a particularly limited understanding as to why rural and urban populations may differ in their climate change views. Toward offering introductory insights into these research gaps, we address the following research questions: Does place matter for Hoosier’s attitude about climate change? If so, what drives these differences? We give particular attention to the role of information and educational values. Our analysis draws on data from a statewide survey of Indiana, sent out to 10,000 Hoosiers between August 2019 and March 2020. In total response, the response rate was just over 29%.
Results/Conclusions
We found that Rural respondents are less likely than Urban respondents to believe that climate change is happening and caused by human activity. They also are less likely to perceive scientific consensus on climate change. Individual’s trust in specific information sources has been established to be a driver of climate change attitudes (Arbuckle et al. 2015). Urban respondents placed their trust in nationally and internationally based scientists, while Rural respondents trusted TV news the most. In past work education level has been considered an important driver in climate change attitudes, but while belief in climate change increases noticeably with increases in education level in Urban respondents, belief in climate change is largely stagnant within Rural populations as education level increases. This points to the fact that it is not necessarily the level of education that matters, but educational values. Rural people place value on “practical skills people need to provide for themselves and their families” considerably more than the other educational values presented. This research begins to establish that place matters for climate change attitudes, and explores causes of these differences with a focus on information and educational values.