The effect of climate change threat on public attitudes towards ethnic and religious minorities and climate refugees

Abstract

How does climate change threat affect attitudes towards ethnic and religious minorities and climate change refugees? We show that threatening climate change can have deep psychological effects even among social majority groups in relatively prosperous and peaceful societies. Using three survey experiments with self-identified White British participants (N = 616, N = 587, and N = 535), we demonstrate that social majority members who are exposed to threatening information about climate change (vs. neutral information) and, at the same time, feel little national efficacy over climate change, evaluate more negatively certain ethnic and religious minorities, especially Muslims and Pakistanis. We found the same trend in the evaluation of climate refugees, although it reached statistical significance only in one of the experiments. We explain these reactions as pertaining to groups that are perceived as threatening the salient ingroup and its collective agency. Our research significantly contributes to the literature on the social and political implications of (climate change) threat, especially by focusing on boundary conditions, namely the perception of collective control in case of complex and large threats.