Abstract
This study examines the interaction of political orientation with academic discipline on beliefs in anthropogenic climate change (ACC) among higher education faculty. Over 300 faculty members at two research institutions in the United States were surveyed on topics concerning ACC and the results were analyzed with multiple regression. Even among professors, there was a strong relationship between political orientation (liberal versus conservative) and belief in ACC; however, the relationship was substantially attenuated among professors who taught courses in liberal arts and education. On the other hand, the relationship between political orientation and ACC belief was much stronger among faculty teaching business and hotel management, compared to faculty teaching other subjects. Finally, there was a main positive effect for teaching science. The results suggest that outreach efforts to encourage more faculty to include climate change relevant information in their courses might give high priority to faculty in liberal arts and education.
Despite a worldwide consensus among scientists, there is still much disbelief and misunderstanding among many people about anthropogenic climate change (McCright & Dunlap, 2011). Research indicates that many individuals still do not view climate change as an immediate pressing priority (Leiserowitz, 2007; Miller, 2012; Pew, 2009). Coverage by mass media has, in part, contributed to this problem. Placing a value on ‘balanced reporting’, journalists have aired arguments and misperceptions by climate change deniers (Boykoff & Boykoff, 2004).
Although social science researchers have placed a lot of attention on how best to frame media messages to encourage belief change and positive action (Hardisty, Johnson & Weber, 2010; Hart, 2011; Knight & Greenberg, 2011), mass media is the one and only tool for educating the public. An underutilized resource is the higher education faculty, including those who do not teach about anthropogenic climate change currently but could do so in some capacity. Although higher education faculty directly reaches only one segment of the public (i.e., students), it is nevertheless a large number (21 million in 2012, Hussar & Bailey, 2013) and there could be a multiplying effect to the extent that students discuss the issue with family members, co-workers, clients (in the case of professional students and alumni) and K-12 students (in the case of teacher candidates).
Faculty across academia are, therefore, in a unique position to help educate future generations of citizens about the climate change. Causes and human reactions to climate change relate to many disciplines in natural science (e.g., geology, physics), social sciences (e.g., psychology, political science, economics, history) and humanities (film, communication, art, ethics/philosophy), as well as engineering, education and architecture. Therefore, we think it is important to understand professors’ own perceptions and beliefs regarding climate change especially. Although faculty can help educate students about man-made (anthropogenic) climate change (ACC), they can also, if misinformed, propagate misconceptions, for example, that climate change is only something that future generations need to worry about, recent warming could be caused by sunspot activity, etc. It is therefore important to understand the professors’ beliefs about climate change and the factors that shape those beliefs.
Prior Research
Many individuals disbelieve or have misconceptions about climate change because they view it as a political issue. Also, they misunderstand the difference between weather and climate and do not understand how extreme cold events can be produced by global warming (see Lombardi, Sinatra, & Nussbaum, 2013). In a series of surveys of American attitude towards ACC, Leiserowitz, Maibach, Roser-Renouf, Feinberg and Howe (2013) have identified six ‘market segments’, namely, alarmed, concerned, cautious, disengaged, doubtful and dismissive. Leiserowitz et al. (2013) found that these segments tend to differ in the aspect of political affiliation, with the doubtful and dismissive composed primarily of Republicans and some Independents. Much other research confirms that alarmists are more liberal and sceptics more conservative (Hamilton, 2010). Whereas liberals are likely to believe it is the government’s job to seek the protection of welfare of all; these views are inconsistent with the views of politically more conservative individuals who tend to focus on economic growth, expanding free markets and reduction of government restrictions. When it comes to climate change, for instance, governmental interventions to restrict greenhouse gas emissions could be viewed as a threat to the goals of conservatives (McCright & Dunlap, 2011).
It is unfortunate and somewhat illogical that the beliefs about scientific issues are affected by political ideologies, since ‘what is’ differs from ‘what ought to be’ (Hume, 1739). One might argue that the attitudes of higher education faculty, being highly intelligent and dedicated to critical thinking and inquiry, would be less affected by political orientation. On the other hand, one could argue that professors are not immune from motivated reasoning, where an individual is motivated to protect the pre-existing beliefs by expending cognitive effort in refuting opposing arguments but not in examining the grounds of one’s own beliefs critically (Kunda, 1990). As McCright and Dunlap (2011) point out, although previous research indicates that educational attainment and issue understanding generally have positive effects on ACC beliefs for those with more liberal views, they may have negative or weaker effects for those with more conservative views (Hamilton, 2008, 2010; Krosnick, Allyson & Visser, 2000; Malka, Krosnick & Langer, 2009).
Many faculty members are politically active and/or have strong political views, and so we would, therefore, still expect political orientation to have a relationship to a faculty member’s beliefs in ACC, but the exact role of political orientation may be moderated by the subject that they teach. Faculty members’ cognitive motivations are likely affected by the epistemic aims, values and paradigms of their specific discipline (Chinn, Buckland & Samarapungavan, 2011; Muis, Bendixen & Haerle, 2006). Faculty members in different disciplines are also exposed to different sources of information and likely have different patterns of social interaction with individuals inside and outside academia (e.g., business professors may be more likely to interact with individuals in the private sector more than history professors). Faculty members in different disciplines participate in different social and intellectual communities which, like political orientation, may affect climate change beliefs.
The purpose of this study was to examine, among higher education faculty, the relationship of political orientation to belief in ACC and how political orientation may be moderated by the subject taught. We did not make prior hypotheses, as the study was part of a larger, exploratory project on faculty attitudes and beliefs, but we did suspect that in subjects that are highly research oriented (e.g., science) and/or which engage in critical inquiry (e.g., liberal arts), political orientation would have a weaker effect than in, for example, professional schools. As we will argue in the discussion, in those subjects in which the topic is less politically polarized, more faculties should be encouraged to teach about climate change, even in minor ways only (e.g., with a class example or assignment).
Methods Used
Participants
The participants were 324 faculty members working at one of two state universities in a southwestern state of the United States. These participants were from a larger study in which university faculty members were surveyed to determine if there was a relationship between feelings of responsibility towards climate change and addressing the topic in their classroom (Beck, Sinatra & Lombardi, 2013). Of the 324 participants, 56 per cent were male and 44 per cent were female. The participants were asked with which race/ethnicity they strongly identify. The distribution was as follows: White, non-Hispanic—88 per cent; Asian—7 per cent; Hispanic—5 per cent; American Indian—2 per cent; Pacific Islander—1 per cent; and Other—3 per cent. Between the two state universities, 61 per cent were from the northern state university and 39 per cent were from the southern state university. Over half (54 per cent) were either an associate or full professor. Only 17 per cent of the participants were assistant professors and 14 per cent were hired as instructors/lecturers. The remaining 15 per cent had job titles as research professor, adjunct professor, visiting professor and graduate teaching assistant. Table 1 shows the distribution of the sample by the subject area taught.
Distribution of sample by subject area
Materials
The survey was developed under a project funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Nevada Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) (Beck et al., 2013). This survey consisted of 30 questions, the majority on a four-point Likert scale, and took approximately 20 minutes to complete. There were three sections to the survey. The first section of questions asked the faculty members about climate change: what they know about it, how concerned they are, and their level of responsibility towards it. The second section of questions asked the faculty members the same type of questions but in relation to their students.
Although Beck et al. (2013) initially analyzed a portion of these data with regard to whether the faculty felt responsible and comfortable in teaching about climate change, the present study goes beyond that in specifically examining the role of political orientation.
The items used in the present study were on a four-point Likert scale ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’. There was also one item which asked about political orientation that was on a five-point scale (‘very liberal’, ‘somewhat liberal’, ‘moderate’, ‘somewhat conservative’ and ‘very conservative’). There was also one item on a four-point scale which asked, ‘To what degree is the topic of climate change addressed in your classroom?’ (‘never addressed’, ‘rarely addressed’, ‘sometimes addressed’ and ‘often addressed’).
Procedure
Creation and administration of the survey was completed through an online survey tool (Beck et al., 2013). The link to the survey was then emailed to all of the faculty members through each of the state university’s main list servers. The faculty members received an email with information about the study that also included a link to the survey.
Results
Belief in Anthropogenic Climate Change
A preliminary analysis of the belief in anthropogenic climate change (BAAC) survey items regarding climate change opinions indicated that there were four items relevant to our research question with strong correlations between one another (see Table 2). However, item 1 (‘I am worried about climate change’) was largely affective in nature; not being purely cognitive, it was therefore not included in the analysis. The status of item 5 (‘I personally do things that might contribute to climate change’) was largely behavioural and so was also excluded. (Including the item was also found to slightly decrease the reliability of the overall composite.) Therefore, we decided to construct our dependent variable based on the average score of the remaining two items (α = 0.93). Both of these items related to beliefs in ACC specifically: item 4 (‘Human activity is playing a role in recent climate change’) and item 7 (‘Greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal, oil and other materials cause average global temperature to rise’). We refer to this composite as BACC, with M = 3.49, SD = 0.87.
Correlations between selected questionnaire items
Regression Analysis
Because the BAAC variable was skewed (–1.77), we used gamma regression to analyze the results (see Nussbaum, 2015, Chapter 9, for a description of this technique). Key research questions were whether teaching in some subject areas predicted BACC more than others and whether the subject interacted with political orientation. We created dummy variables (i.e., coded 0 or 1) for each subject and, to avoid including an undue number of interaction terms in one regression model, initially separate regressions were performed for each topic with the relevant dummy variable and interaction term used as predictors. Each regression was run on the entire sample, with a zero on the dummy variable indicating that the faculty member did not teach that subject.
The results are shown in Table 3. In gamma regression, the estimates need to be exponentiated to be interpreted (so, e.g., the exponentiation of 2.0 is e2 = 7.39). The intercepts were all approximately 1.53; exp(1.53) = 4.62 on a five-point scale. The political orientation (PO) terms were all highly significant, with estimates approximately –0.12; exp(–0.12) = 0.89. This result means that the mean BACC score declined by 11 per cent with each additional point of conservatism on the PO scale (1 – 0.89 = 0.11). None of the subject (S) terms were significant with the exception of hotel administration (exp[0.48] = 1.62, p = 0.042); however, these terms must be interpreted jointly with the interaction terms.
Regression coefficients for various subjects on BACC
*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
In regards to S x PO interactions, there were significant negative interactions for business (exp[–0.23] = 0.79; p = 0.022) and hotel administration (exp[–0.31] = 0.73; p = 0.011) and positive interactions for education (exp[0.14] = 1.15; p = 0.05) and liberal arts (exp[0.10] = 1.11; p = 0.043). Because the beta estimates in each pair were similar, and the grouping made a theoretical sense, we combined (a) business and hotel administration and (b) education and liberal arts, so as to derive a single set of parameter estimates for each combination. This approach allowed us to construct a single graph (discussed below) to illustrate the interactions.
In our subsequent ‘integrated’ model, we also included main effect terms for all the other subjects shown in Table 3 (i.e., those with no significant interactions), except for fine arts, which was arbitrarily designated as the reference category. The four-point metric variable reflecting the extent that the faculty member teaches about climate change was also included (M = 2.20, SD = 0.95).
Regression coefficients for integrated model on BACC
*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
As can be seen in Table 4, there was a main effect of teaching science, such that those in science were 15 per cent more likely to believe in ACC than the reference category (p = 0.049). This is reassuring, given that ACC is a scientific topic. The effect was small, perhaps because overall support for ACC was quite high. The interactions with political orientation are of more interest, which are shown in Figure 1. There was an overall negative relationship between PO and BACC, but the relationship was weak among liberal arts/education faculty (p = 0.016), as shown by the fairly flat regression line, and much stronger among business/hotel management faculty (p = 0.006), compared to the faculty in other subject areas. As shown in Table 4, an increase of one-point on the political orientation scale was associated, in the case of business/hotel management, with a 25.17 per cent decrease in BACC; for liberal arts/education, with a 1 per cent decrease; and for other subjects, with a decrease of 10.42 per cent.
There was no significant relationship between BACC and a faculty member actually teaching climate change. Closer inspection showed that there were many faculties who did not teach about climate change but who had high BACC scores, and some faculties who did teach about climate change with low BACC scores. There were two such professors with BACC scores of 1.0 who taught in professional schools (business, education) and two with BACC scores of 1.5 who did not identify their school or subject. Based on the open-ended comments made in the survey responses, we believe that they are teaching that climate change is a part of the global climate’s natural variability, that climate scientists disagree and often distort the data, and that ACC is primarily a political issue. It is disturbing that there are sceptics in higher education who are likely spreading misconceptions about ACC, further highlighting the need to encourage other faculty members to teach accurate information about ACC, so as to counteract the effects of sceptics.
Discussion
This study raised the question of how the subject taught was related to the climate change beliefs of university professors and how the subject interacted with political orientation. Consistent with previous research (McCright, 2011), political orientation was found to be a major predictor of BACC, but not the only predictor, belying the notion that climate change is just a political issue. In fact, professors who taught science courses had somewhat stronger climate change beliefs, even when political orientation was controlled for, and presumably some of these professors were more attuned to the scientific evidence supporting ACC than others. Moreover, the effect of political orientation was moderated by the subject taught; specifically, teaching business or hotel administration made the effect of political orientation more pronounced and teaching liberal arts or education made the effect less pronounced.
Why would political orientation have a stronger effect in schools of business or hotel management? (We will subsequently refer just to business schools, because hotel management is similar.) One explanation is that business professors are part of different intellectual communities that reinforce beliefs in free markets and a resistance to ACC. This explanation does not account for liberal business professors who believe in ACC (see Figure 1) and these outnumbered the conservative sceptics. Epistemological beliefs refer to one’s beliefs about how knowledge claims are warranted (Muis et al., 2006), and Trautwein and Lüdtke (2007) report that the business students believe that knowledge is more certain and less changeable than social science students do. Because some of these students become business professors; their epistemological beliefs may be similar as well. Furthermore, the culture of business schools may emphasize practice more than inquiry (Trautwein & Lüdtke, 2007), allowing the ACC beliefs of business faculty to become more politically aligned and, among faculty members, possibly more politically polarized. A related possibility is that business professors may interact more with individuals in private industry, many of whom see their business interests threatened by ACC, but some of whom also see mitigation and adaptation of ACC as an economic opportunity. These social interactions may also intensify the effect of political orientation on beliefs, especially if political orientation also affects the type of individuals in the private sector with which a faculty member interacts (pro or anti-ACC). Finally, we note that both business schools housed the departments of economics, and although economics is a science, it is often treated as an ideology, especially among conservative professors (Mooney, 2012), who may be more ideological, thereby contributing to a stronger statistical interaction.
There are also several possible explanations for why the political orientation was less of an influence among liberal arts and education professors. Liberal arts and education encompass a number of social sciences, including political science, sociology, psychology and science education; these faculties have a better understanding of the nature and source of biases in human thinking and behaviour. (We know that some even study the social effects of climate change.) Liberal arts and education professors may have a more global perspective than others or more complex views of society. As a result, the political orientation item—involving a single dimension (liberal to conservative)—may not have fully captured the complexity or nuances of their political beliefs. It is also possible that liberal arts and education faculties are more open-minded, which has been found to positively affect the BACC (Nisbet, Hart, Myers & Ellithorpe, 2013).
Finally, it is plausible that professors in liberal arts and education are less likely to watch the conservative media sources like Fox News than other professors, and are more likely to rely on a greater amount and a variety of other sources of information of high quality, further depoliticizing the issue of ACC among these faculties. Further research would be required to test and verify these different explanations.
Theoretical Implications
While political orientation had a strong effect on climate change belief even in academia, its effect was lessened in certain subject areas and strengthened in others. Although some of our explanations for the effect highlight some well-known variables, specifically media consumption (Feldman et al., 2014), less attention has been paid to social interactions within intellectual communities and to epistemological beliefs. Further research on the role of these variables would be useful.
The concept of framing has been heavily used in the study of climate change communication (Hardisty, Johnson & Weber, 2010; Hart, 2011; Knight & Greenberg, 2011). Frames select ‘some aspects of perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described’ (Entman, 1993, p. 52). Nisbet (2009) identified various frames used in discourse on climate change: for example, economic development, scientific uncertainty or Frankenstein’s monster. Within any particular frame, there may be sub-frames that correspond to different issue positions; for example, ACC can be perceived as a threat to economic growth or as an opportunity for growth through investments in alternative energy production or in cost-saving measures (e.g., using low-energy light bulbs in buildings). How an individual frames a topic is influenced by political orientation, not only because the individuals try to maintain cognitive coherence with their belief systems (Thagard & Findlay, 2011), but also because political elites uses mass media to frame issues in particular ways (Nisbet, 2009). One’s academic discipline is also likely to affect framing: business professors tend to think in economic terms, whereas sociology professors may think more in terms of effects and reactions on particular social subgroups. Cognitive conflict between the frames respectively associated with political orientation and discipline can be resolved in various ways (Chinn & Brewer, 1998), including discounting evidence, reframing issues (e.g., seeing mitigating ACC as a religious imperative; Nisbet, 2009), or as an economic opportunity, or coordinating and synthesizing multiple frames so as to make one’s belief system more complex (e.g., differentiating the scientific, normative and social aspects of the topic). Our results suggest that this process may result in giving less weight to politically induced frames in some cases (e.g., liberal arts) and in other cases more (e.g., business).
Practical Implications
Courses specifically on ACC in higher education are highly valuable. There are many dimensions to the topic, and thus opportunity in many disciplines to offer such courses. We have seen or helped developed courses, not only on the science of ACC or related topics (e.g., water resources, mathematical modelling), but also liberal arts/education courses related to climate change and reasoning, ethics, media imagery, English composition, sociology and political science/public policy (Nevada Climate Change Portal [NCCP], 2014). However, many students are not able to or not willing to take such courses, either because of other priorities or because of a lack of offerings. Important key facts about ACC can however be conveyed by the faculty in other ways. For example, the public underestimates the degree of scientific consensus on climate change (Lewandowsky, Gignac & Vaughan, 2012), and we have found that a simple statement during a statistics or psychology lecture—about 97 per cent of climate scientists believe in ACC—can surprise the students and can be fodder for class discussion. Other key concepts or facts that need to be conveyed to students might include the difference between weather and climate (Shepardson, Niyogi, Choi & Charusombat, 2009); that ACC is occurring as opposed to the distant future now (Leiserowitz et al., 2013); that ACC is related to an enhanced greenhouse effect (Shepardson et al., 2009); and that even though greenhouse gases make up a relatively small fraction of all atmospheric gases, the other gases do not cause global warming (CIRES, 2014). To build basic literacy in climate change, professors can use ACC-related examples in lectures or homework, or they can have one writing assignment or research project related to ACC (whatever best fits in a specific course). Of course, there is the danger that inaccurate information may be transmitted or acquired, but outreach efforts to encourage professors to address ACC in their courses should also educate these professors about basic facts. Faculty who currently teach climate change should be encouraged to engage in this outreach.
One practical implication of our findings is that it might be most productive to target liberal arts and education faculties in these outreach efforts, given our finding that ACC may be less politically charged among professors teaching in these subject areas. While outreach efforts to the faculties in other subjects (including business or hotel administration) are also important, given time and resource constraints, we would recommend at least starting with liberal arts and education faculties. (Additional studies should be conducted to evaluate our recommendation.) Our findings may also help tailor and inform outreach efforts to the faculties in different subject areas.
One limitation of our study is that the survey was conducted in only one state; therefore, to improve external validity, similar studies should be conducted at universities in other states and regions of the United States or in other nations.
There is evidence that many students in higher education are relatively uninformed and unengaged with the topic of climate change. What many know (or do not know) about climate change is learned from whatever media they consume and from social interaction with peers. It is, therefore, important that students receive greater information from a variety of faculty members about the nature of ACC and strategies for mitigating and adapting to its effects. We hope that the findings reported here will contribute to enhancing faculty collaborations in higher education centred on this important objective.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
This material is based upon the work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant EPS-0814372 (EPSCoR Nevada Infrastructure for Climate Change Science, Education and Outreach Project). We would like to thank Gale M. Sinatra and Abby Beck for their work on initial data collection.