Expected climate change consequences and their role in explaining individual risk judgments

temporal, or hypothetical distance may be high although the question accounts for geographi- cal distance. With regards to relationships between the six impact categories and the risk judgments, the pattern was relatively similar for both outcomes: impact associations categorized as attitudes and goals (Level 1), environmental changes (Level 4), or impacts on humans (Level 5) were related to both higher levels of worry about climate change and expectations of more negative climate change impacts. Expecting ‘hardly any impacts’ of climate change on one’s country was negatively related to both risk judgments. The positive effects, particularly the effect of Level 4 and Level 5, are in line with previous studies asking about environmental risks [11, 14]. Maybe surprisingly, the largest positive effect was that of attitudes, motives and goals. Due to large differences in the size of each category, we should be careful in drawing conclusions. Still, future studies could investigate this further. One notable observation was that the two most frequently mentioned categories, ‘environ- mental changes’ and ‘impacts on humans’, were consistently related to higher levels of worry about climate change as well as evaluating national climate change impacts negatively. Still, the level of worry about climate change was relatively low. Previous research has shown that when asked to consider how climate change will affect their own country, people tend to focus on somewhat remote impacts, such as consequences for plants and animals or future generations

[46]. Consequently, there is some reason to assume that the identified associations could have been even stronger if people were more aware of present-day and personally relevant negative consequences of climate change. Future studies could also account for the valence of the responses. Some people might mention country-specific neutral or positive effects, such as opportunities for agriculture. Such responses might weaken the associations with the out- comes, especially regarding the evaluation of how positive or negative country-specific effects will be. One difference between the two outcomes was answers referring to emissions and pollution (Level 3). Answers falling into this category were related to general climate change worry, but not to country-specific risk evaluation. Another interesting observation is that the category ‘actions and activities’ were not related to any of the risk judgments. This might be because people consider changes in actions and activities as somewhat controllable and therefore less of a risk, an interpretation that is in line with prior studies [15]. The width (how many levels were mentioned) and depth (whether any of the sub-levels were mentioned) of a response were related to worry about climate change, but not to the mea- sure of risk evaluation. While cognitive assessments of a given risk mainly arise from the per- ceived probability and severity, emotional reactions such as worry are typically more closely related to factors such as the vividness of imagined impacts [45]. Thus, responses including a

larger number or more concrete depictions of possible impacts on the national scale might reflect that a respondent has more vivid images of climate change as a risk. Future research could look further into the question of how the vividness of people’s mental images regarding climate change plays a role in shaping individual risk judgments. Mentioning consequences in a wider range of categories was related to higher levels of worry. The effect of depth was more complex; the first level of depth was positively related to worry, while the second level did not exhibit a statistically significant effect. This is in line with previous studies; while a general and unspecific belief in negative climate change impacts is related to worry about climate change [2], the relationship between knowledge about specific climate change consequences and worry about climate change has been reported to be weak or non-existent [47]. The results can be interpreted to suggest that more general knowledge about climate change impacts can increase risk judgments, whereas very specific knowledge fails to show a similar effect. Further experimental studies are needed to scrutinize the PLOS ONE Expected climate change consequences and individual risk judgments PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281258 February 15, 2023 11 / 15