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

was conceived, the published literature suggested that Americans held moderate levels of cli- mate change concern [53–55]. We found that 44% (n = 452) of our respondents stated they were ‘very concerned’ about climate change, 30% (n = 312) said they were ‘somewhat con- cerned’, 14% (n = 145) said they were ‘not too concerned’ and 9% (n = 88) were ‘not at all con- cerned.’ Only 4% of respondents (n = 40) said that they did not believe that climate change exists. The respondents also ranked climate change as the second most concerning issue behind terrorism (Table 2). Unsurprisingly, people who were more concerned about climate change were more likely to rank climate change as their top threat (r(1004) = 0.727, p < 0.001). The fact that climate change elicited a high level of concern and was ranked as a top threat suggests that climate change was perceived to be a serious threat to our American participants. Another factor to consider is that we relied on participants’ self-reported ability to visualize the future. In addition to getting participants to describe future travel, this paper would have been stronger if we had asked participants to describe what they believed would be the conse- quences of climate change affecting the year 2050. We may have then been able to use these descriptions as another way of measuring ability to visualize the future. However, since many of our responses regarding future travel were brief this may be more appropriate in an interview set- ting where there is more time and the interview can tease out different ideas. Future studies could

attempt to create a more objective measure to assess participants’ ability to visualize the distant future. Future research could also see if there is a difference in how people think of climate change before and after they are asked to describe how they envision the world in the future. Other predictors of climate change risk perception The previous sections revealed that the original models (Model 1 and Model 2) should be rejected as they were not good predictors of participants’ levels of climate change concern. For Model 3, we tested whether environmental beliefs were a better predictor of levels of climate change concern. Since climate change threatens natural environments [1] it makes sense to test whether individuals’ environmental beliefs are related to their perceptions of climate change. A New Zealand study found environmental values to be positively correlated to cli- mate change risk perception [56], and a U.K. study reported that next to direct experience with air pollution, environmental beliefs were the biggest predictor of engaging in climate mit- igating actions such as taking public transport, walking or cycling [57]. Unfortunately, Whit- marsh did not present the data supporting this claim, making it difficult to verify [57]. Additionally, an Australian study found that beliefs regarding the ‘elasticity’ or ‘ductility” of the environment were related to whether participants said climate change is anthropomorphic in nature [58]. Our participants reported low levels of environmental concern with only 29% agreeing that

there are limits to growth beyond which our industrialised society cannot expand. Similarly, only 29% of participants agreed that humans do not have the right to modify the natural environment to suit their needs (n = 309 and n = 304; Fig 4). When we added environmental beliefs to Table 2. Seven global threats ranked by level of concern, with higher rank indicating greater concern. Global Threat Overall Rank Mean Rank N Terrorism 1 5.2 1020 Climate Change 2 4.8 1007 Loss of biodiversity 3 4.1 999 Radioactive waste 4 4.0 997 Nuclear power 5 3.9 1004 Genetic modification 6 3.5 996 AIDS 7 2.6 997 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0244545.t002 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 9 / 17