Climate change risk perception in the USA and alignment with sustainable travel behaviours

This could be because participants who are more concerned about climate change may per- ceive technology as the best or most likely way to mitigate climate change. At the same time, participants in our study tended to disagree that humans have the right to modify the natural environment to suit their needs. The higher a participant’s level of climate change concern, the more likely they were to disagree with this statement. This poses an interesting question regarding what types of climate mitigating technologies may or may not be acceptable to par- ticipants. For example, the presence of high-speed train systems across the United States was frequently mentioned as a way that travel would change by the year 2050. Although high speed trains have the potential to make future travel more sustainable they would require new infra- structure, raising the question: would people find it acceptable to disrupt natural ecosystems in order to create systems that could help reduce carbon emission? A more extreme solution would be geoengineering. A workshop looking at public percep- tions of geoengineering in the UK found participants tended to view geoengineering as inter- fering with nature but were divided as to whether geoengineering was a harmful or necessary mitigation strategy [35]. The acceptability of geoengineering as a method of climate change mitigation may be dependent on personal values [73]. Results from the 2011 National Survey of American Public Opinion on Climate Change found that Americans who believed in cli-

mate change were more likely to agree that humans can use geoengineering to combat climate change, whereas those who did not believe in climate change were more likely to agree that geoengineering will do more harm than good [74]. Perhaps those who are more concerned about climate change reduce cognitive dissonance by justifying geoengineering as an accept- able or necessary modification of nature. Conclusion Americans will have an enormous responsibility, and equally significant role to play in mitigat- ing climate change. Since climate change risk perception may influence climate mitigating behaviours, we hypothesized that the ability to visualize the future and future optimism could influence climate change risk perception. Our data on Americans’ perceptions of climate change risk were collected a few weeks before the 2016 American Presidential election; thus, this research also provides a snapshot of public opinion at a critical time in climate change history. We offered a framework that tried to indirectly test how the distant future could influence perceptions of climate change risk. We found that self-reported ability to visualize the distant future and personal optimism were not good predictors of levels of concern about climate change. However, we did find that technological optimism was correlated to climate change concern. Future research could explore the underpinning reasons for this relationship and whether it applies to all forms of climate mitigating technology or only certain proposals.

We found that environmental beliefs were a stronger predictor of climate change than the factors that we initially proposed. Future research interested in factors that affect climate change risk perception should continue to include environmental values. It will be beneficial for researchers to focus on how to convert a growing concern about climate change into actionable mitigation strategies. We believe that achieving a low carbon future will be easier if people associate the future with low carbon options. Future research should continue to explore methods of engaging people in climate mitigating behaviours. Supporting information S1 File. Online survey questions. This is a PDF of the online survey that participants were required to complete. (PDF) PLOS ONE Climate change risk perception in the USA and alignment with sustainable travel behaviours PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0244545 February 3, 2021 13 / 17