A Cross-National Study of Beliefs in Science and Value-Beliefs-Norms Perspectives: How Does Exposure to Climate Change Shape Beliefs

Environmental values, beliefs, and norms (VBN) have long been an important framework to understand environmentally conscious behaviors. Scholars have only begun to integrate how emerging belief systems that include faith in science to solve environmental problems may be incorporated into VBN perspectives. Although scholars have made preliminary theoretical bridges, scholars remain divided over how technological optimism intersects with norms, values, and environmental behaviors. Using historical data from the 2020 International Social Survey Programme that covered 28 countries, we applied latent class analysis and identified four distinctive types of attitudinal clusters. Two of these clusters ranked high on technological optimism (i.e., eco-modernists) but notably differed in respect to VBN dimensions compared to other pro-environmental clusters that emphasized conservation, less consumption, and greater acceptance of economic degrowth. We also found evidence that direct exposure to environmental disasters may in some instances have increased the likelihood of being in the conservationist cluster that were defined by high environmental intentions, beliefs, and behaviors—findings that were largely consistent with VBN literatures. However, we also found that exposure to climate change may have also led to a doubling down in faith in science in other instances—findings that were consistent with faith in science literatures.