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

participants longer to imagine negative futures than it did positive [24]. Students were more likely to believe positive futures would occur compared to the negative futures [24]. Similarly, undergraduates were more likely to be optimistic about their personal futures compared to the world’s future [25]. Optimism has been seen in about 80% of people regardless of race, religion and age [18]. When applied to climate change, personal optimism bias may make people believe that the effects of climate change will not be that severe or that climate change will not affect them. A 2019 study found that although 67% of Americans agreed that climate change was already occurring, 42% believed it would have little to no effect on themselves personally [26]. This optimistic perception that an individual’s future will turn out positively, despite any statistics or logic that would suggest otherwise, may make people less concerned and less willing to engage in climate change mitigation. However, tackling optimism bias is fraught as a lack of optimism bias is linked with depression [18]. As discussed by Harre´, there is a delicate balance between making people concerned enough about their own future to act but maintain enough hope for them to not give up [27]. Optimism bias may also extend to technology. The belief that technology will be able to reverse or otherwise help humanity adapt to the adverse consequences of climate change may negatively affect climate change risk assessments by providing individuals with unrealistic

expectations regarding the extent that future technology can compensate for current high car- bon habits. Technological advances were one of the reasons that society has yet to reach the limit to industrialised growth that was predicted in the 1970s due to resource shortages [28]. A poll of 1534 American adults conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2016 found that 55% of respondents said they thought new technology will probably, or definitely, have solved most of the problems caused by global climate change in the next 50 years [29]. Expecting technol- ogy to solve climate change-related problems could reduce the incentive for individuals to change their carbon emission behaviours. In the U.K., technological optimism has been identi- fied as a barrier to engaging in climate change mitigation [30]. That being said, the Pew Research Center reported that 67% of Americans stated major changes to lifestyle were neces- sary to address climate change [29]. This suggests that the majority of individuals do under- stand that they cannot solely rely on technological advances to mitigate climate change and that they will be required to change their behaviour in order to meet mitigation targets. Relying on future technology to offset climate change has long been recognised as a gamble. First, the technology could fail to be invented in time to effectively reduce carbon emissions. Second, the technology may not be able to meet its targets [31]. Third, the technology could have detrimental side effects [31]. Behavioural research has shown that when gambling, people

change their conceptions of probability depending on whether or not the payoff will occur in the near or distant future [32, 33]. For example, American university students were more likely to make riskier bets if the payoff was in the distant future compared to the near future [32]. This was true even when the gambles included loss [33]. Shelley explained that while people tend to discount both distant future gains and losses, compared to near future gains and losses they disregard distant losses at a greater rate [33]. This could help explain why people are will- ing to gamble on technology being able to help solve climate change issues even though it is risky. Anderson criticised the IPCC’s climate change scenarios for the optimistic assumption that new climate change technology (such as geoengineering and other negative emissions technol- ogies) will be available in the future [34]. Geoengineering refers to technology that can inten- tionally manipulate the earth’s climate [35], whereas negative emissions technologies intentionally remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere [36]. Some examples of proposed geoengineered solutions to reduce atmospheric carbon include releasing aerosols into the 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 4 / 17