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

concerned environmental changes (Level 4), comprising about 61% of the responses in the UK, 86% in Norway and France, and 87% in Germany. There are some country differences concerning what kind of environmental changes people mention (see S3 Table). Respondents in Germany (38%) and France (41%) more frequently specified natural disasters as the most important impact than did respondents in the UK (9%) and Norway (13%). Especially in Nor- way, the mentioned ‘environmental changes’ were often more general, for example by men- tioning temperature or weather changes (while 85% of the respondents mention environmental changes, only 23% specify natural disasters or impacts on animals and plants). While impacts on humans (Level 5) were the second most frequently mentioned category across countries (14% in total), and in both Norway, Germany, and France, the second most frequently mentioned category in the UK was attitudes, motives, and goals (Level 1). The least frequently mentioned category was impacts on humans (Level 5) in the UK, attitudes, motives, and goals (Level 1) in Norway and Germany, and hardly any impacts in France. The number of respondents mentioning hardly any impacts varied considerably across countries, compris- ing about 12% of responses in the UK and less than 1% in France. Frequencies for all sub-levels can be seen in the supporting information, S3 Table. Socio-demographic differences in expected climate change consequences Table 2 shows that women were significantly more likely than men to mention environmental

changes (Level 4) and significantly less likely to expect hardly any impacts. Further, those who placed themselves further right on the political spectrum were less likely to mention impacts Table 2. Predicting the content of causal beliefs about climate change from gender, age, political orientation, and country (weighted). Attitudes, motives, and goals (Level 1) Actions and activities (Level 2) Emissions and pollution (Level 3) Environmental changes (Level 4) Impacts on humans (Level 5) Hardly any impacts B (SE) B (SE) B (SE) B (SE) B (SE) B (SE) Intercept -1.35 (0.30)��� -1.69 (0.25)��� -2.19 (0.27)��� 0.66 (0.18)��� -2.03 (0.23)��� -3.36 (0.46)��� Gender Women -0.16 (0.17) 0.07 (0.13) 0.08 (0.14) 0.20 (0.09)� 0.07 (0.11) -0.61 (0.19)�� Age 25–34 -0.30 (0.35) -0.33 (0.27) 0.45 (0.27) -0.28 (0.19) 0.22 (0.23) 0.75 (0.45) 35–44 -0.24 (0.35) -0.10 (0.25) -0.01 (0.28) -0.14 (0.19) 0.41 (0.21) 0.18 (0.49) 45–54 0.20 (0.31) -0.07 (0.24) 0.14 (0.26) -0.24 (0.18) 0.27 (0.22) 0.60 (0.44) 55–64 -0.25 (0.32) -0.04 (0.25) 0.24 (0.26) -0.34 (0.18) 0.06 (0.22) 0.89 (0.44)� 65 + 0.33 (0.28) -0.15 (0.23) 0.01 (0.25) -0.35 (0.17)� 0.39 (0.21) 1.35 (0.41)�� Political orientation -0.06 (0.04) 0.01 (0.03) 0.02 (0.03) -0.02 (0.02) -0.09 (0.02)��� 0.17 (0.05)�� Country Norway -3.56 (0.52)��� -0.60 (0.16)��� -0.81 (0.19)��� 1.40 (0.13)��� 0.30 (0.16) -1.60 (0.25)��� Germany -2.53 (0.35)��� -1.23 (0.21)��� -1.81 (0.25)��� 1.43 (0.13)��� 0.76 (0.16)��� -2.11 (0.33)���

France -2.51 (0.32)��� -1.50 (0.21)��� -0.57 (0.18) �� 1.40 (0.13) ��� 0.47 (0.16) �� -4.44 (1.01)��� Variance explained Pseudo R2 = .21 Pseudo R2 = .05 Pseudo R2 = .04 Pseudo R2 = .08 Pseudo R2 = .02 Pseudo R2 = .20 Note. Political orientation is continuous, gender is dichotomous (men as reference category), and age (age group 15–24 as reference category) and country (UK as reference category) categorical. All reported p-values are based on the Wald test. �p < .05 ��p < .01 ���p < .001 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281258.t002 PLOS ONE Expected climate change consequences and individual risk judgments PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281258 February 15, 2023 6 / 15