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Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, Purdue University, 195 Marsteller St., West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA
Brian Lamb School of Communication, Purdue University, Beering Hall, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Available online 13 January 2015
Using a survey of agricultural advisors across the Midwestern U.S., this paper explores two additions to
the Social Amplication of Risk Framework (SARF)dtrust in information sources and the availability
heuristic. Connections between demographic factors, belief in climate change, perceived risk, and advisors' attitudes toward adaptation to climate change are examined. Three-fourths of advisors believe
climate change is occurring, but disagree on the human contribution. Trust in information sources
predicted agricultural advisors' belief in climate change. Consistent with the availability heuristic,
perceiving variability in weather made advisors more likely to believe in anthropogenic climate change.
Believing climate change is at least partly human caused increased agreement that agricultural adaptation is important. Perceiving greater risk from potential climate impacts and noticing variable weather
also signicantly increased adaptation attitudes. Findings suggest that trust and availability heuristic
could be added to help explain the processes of social amplication and attenuation of risk.
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Adaptation attitudes
Availability heuristic
Risk
Trust
Information
1. Introduction
167
Fig. 1. The Social Amplication of Risk Framework (from Pidgeon et al., 2002, p. 14).
168
an intuitive heuristic at the individual station. Trust in information sources ts in with the professional information brokers, and
the social amplication stationsdwhere trust will play a role in
how much weight an individual gives to information received from
each source. We further explore the role of heuristics and risk
perceptions in the formation of advisors' attitudes toward climate
change adaptation, which are part of institutional and social
behavior within the SARF.
Agricultural advisors t into the framework under social
amplication stations as professional information brokers. Agricultural advisors include people employed in a variety of specializations such as University Extension agents, Certied Crop Advisors
(CCAs), and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) employees. Few studies have examined the role of this group in
inuencing farmers' decision making in general, and particularly
regarding climate change adaptation. We explore the climate
change beliefs and adaptation attitudes of this understudied group
through the lens of the SARF, with the availability heuristic and
trust in sources of climate change information acting as moderators
of their perception of climate change risk.
2.2. The availability heuristic
This paper focuses on the individual processing of risk and the
role of heuristics, or mental shortcuts, in perceptions of environmental risks, within the SARF. When confronted with a new and
complex risk issue (such as climate change) with limited time or
resources to make a judgment, people tend to process information
automatically using heuristics rather than through thoughtful
systematic analysis (Bostrom, Morgan, Fischhoff, & Read, 1994;
Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1989; Loewenstein, Weber, Hsee, &
Welch, 2001; Weber & Stern, 2011). Connected to personal experiences, the availability heuristic demonstrates how vivid and
salient a particular risk is and how quickly one can think of an
example that occurred recently and had negative consequences.
The public uses this heuristic to make connections between specic
events and broader social and environmental risks (Sunstein, 2006;
Tverksy & Kahneman, 2002). Sunstein (2006) summarized the effect of the availability heuristic, noting that, If people can easily
think of such examples, they are far more likely to be frightened
than if they cannot (p. 5). In the context of climate change, extreme
weather events can be memorable and disproportionately
contribute to personal experiences and availability heuristics,
which inuence lay judgments of climate change and risk perceptions (Bostrom et al. 1994; Weber & Stern, 2011).
Sunstein (2006) points out that conrmation bias (paying more
attention or giving more weight to information or events that
conrm rather than challenge our beliefs) is likely to impact individuals' availability heuristics, since individuals who already
believe that climate change is happening are probably more likely
to associate individual weather events with climate change
(correctly or incorrectly). Weber (1997) found that Illinois farmers
reported temperature trends consistent with their own views about
whether or not climate change was occurring. Haden et al. (2012)
found that California farmers' adaptation and mitigation behaviors were inuenced by their personal experiences with water
scarcity. The current paper explores the role of the personal experience in the form of noticing more variable weather locally, as a
potential availability heuristic inuencing agricultural advisors'
climate change beliefs.
2.3. Trust in climate change information sources
Information brokers and social amplication stations are
critical in the communication of risks from climate change. Social
169
Demographics Gender
and Advisor Type (H1)
Trust in Information
(H2)
Ag advisors belief in
anthropogenic climate
change
Perceived risks to
farms (H4)
Availability heuristic
(H3)
Adaptation
attitudes (H5)
170
Table 1
Distribution of advisor types.
Advisor type
Percent of
respondents
23%
17%
14%
12%
11%
6%
5%
4%
Survey responses from the four states were merged into one SPSS
le for analysis. After calculating initial descriptive statistics on
relevant survey questions, Chi square tests were used to check for
differences in climate change beliefs between different types of advisors. The Gamma statistic was used to test for correlation between
ordinal level variables, and ordinal logistic regression (logit) was
used to test relationships between multiple independent variables
(including demographic factors) and ordinal dependent variables
(such as climate change belief, and attitudes toward adaptation).
4. Results
Table 2
Climate change beliefs among types of agricultural advisors.
Belief statement
% (n 1745)
12.6
37.0
24.9
23.3
2.3
Odds Ratios
Gender (female)
Age
State (compared to Nebraska)
Indiana
Iowa
Michigan
Education level
Advisor Type (compared to Certied Crop Advisors (CCA))
Ag Retailer/Implement Retailer
Ag Banker
Grower Group
University Extension
Farm Service Agency
Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS)
Ag Cooperative
Ag Lawyer
Soil & Water Conservation Dist./Natural Resource Dist.
State Dept. of Ag
State Dept. of Environment/Natural Resources
Overall Model Statistics
2.01*
1.00
* sign. at p .001;
0.89
1.17
1.12
1.02
1.05
1.05
0.42
2.53*
1.58
2.20*
0.67
1.45
1.79
1.34
5.49*
Pseudo R2 .033*
sign. at p .01.
5 Climate change is occurring, and caused mostly by human activities. Only advisor type and gender signicantly predicted level
of belief in climate change. The overall model was signicant
(p < .001; Pseudo R2 .03) and Table 3 shows the results from this
regression.
As shown in Table 3, FSA employees, SWCD employees, NRCS
employees, University Extension agents, and State Dept. of Environment or Natural Resources employees all had signicantly
higher odds of scoring more positively on the climate change belief
scale. In other words, these groups were more likely than CCAs to
believe in anthropogenic climate change. Additionally, female advisors have signicantly higher belief in anthropogenic climate
change, being about twice as likely as male advisors to score high
on the climate change belief scale. Advisors' education level, age,
and state where employed were not signicant predictors of belief
in anthropogenic climate change.
Table 4
Trust in Information Sources correlated with climate change belief.
Information source
University Extension
Scientists
Family and friends
Farm groups
State agencies
Conservation organizations
Television weather reporters
Agribusiness companies
The farm press
Federal agencies
Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC)
Environmental organizations
Radio talk show hosts
The mainstream news media
Online social media, such as
blogs, Twitter, etc.
4.03
3.74
3.45
3.36
3.29
3.18
3.12
3.11
3.10
3.06
2.69
0.22*
0.43*
n.s.
n.s.
0.30*
0.31*
0.17*
n.s.
n.s.
0.35*
0.53*
2.38
2.15
2.13
2.07
0.42*
n.s.
0.35*
0.11*
171
172
Table 5
Mean concern with risks correlated with climate change beliefs.
Risk/problem
Mean (n)
Gamma
2.90
2.81
2.61
2.60
2.59
2.55
2.54
2.48
2.27
2.19
0.22*
0.24*
0.07
0.24*
0.13*
0.27*
0.10*
0.11*
0.17*
0.24*
* sign. at p .001;
sign. at p .01.
(1729)
(1719)
(1722)
(1722)
(1721)
(1721)
(1721)
(1722)
(1720)
(1729)
Mean (n)
Gamma
3.69 (1593)
0.36*
3.57 (1530)
0.32
3.83 (1544)
0.51*
* sign. at p .001;
sign. at p .01.
173
terms of the role of human activities in this change. A good proportion (about 25%) of agricultural advisors attribute climate
change to mostly natural variation, while about 50% see human
activities as an equal or greater cause of climate change than natural variation. This could be good news for communication and
outreach with this audience regarding climate change adaptation.
Most advisors are likely to be receptive to the idea that climate
change is happening and adaptation is a wise course of action.
However, this does not bode well for mitigation-only communication efforts, since only about half of advisors see human contributions as an equal or greater cause of climate change than natural
changes.
Consistent with Hypothesis 1, signicant differences in climate
change beliefs between the different advisor groups surveyed
indicate that individuals working in a given sub-eld tend to have
similar views on climate change, while those in different sub-elds
(i.e. private crop advisors vs. public NRCS employees) have
diverging views on this issue. These results t with ndings by
Stedman (2004) about differences in climate change beliefs between organizations involved in policymaking, and conrmed my
expectations stated above, that employees of more conservationfocused organizations would be more likely to believe in anthropogenic climate change than those with an economic focus.
Potential explanations for State Department of Environment/
Natural Resources or NRCS employees being more accepting of
climate change than private retailers and CCAs include the goals
and culture of the organizations/entities employing each of these
advisors, which are likely related to the types of people who decide
to work in a given sub-eld. For example, the NRCS is likely to
attract individuals with more positive environmental attitudes,
who are concerned about conserving natural resources and may be
more familiar with the science of climate change than individuals
who decide to work as a CCA. Similarly, University Extension is
Table 7
Ordinal logistic regression- Predicting advisors' adaptation attitudes.
Independent Variable
Changing practices important for LT I should help farmers prepare Important farmers
success farmers I advise- Odds Ratio for variability- odds Ratio
adapt to CC, LT success
U.S. ag- Odds Ratio
1.90
3.48
3.33
6.30*
3.21*
1.39
0.62
0.97
1.36*
3.02
9.19*
10.0*
24.4*
2.54*
1.70*
0.94
1.00
1.35*
0.83
0.95
1.07
1.21
0.62
0.61
0.91
1.02
1.12
0.73
0.77
0.99
0.52*
1.16
1.04
0.15*
1.08
0.88
0.25
Pseudo R2 0.13*
1.12
1.10
0.96
0.82
0.90
0.85
1.10
0.69
1.11
0.90
0.47
Pseudo R2 0.15*
174
likely to employ individuals who are more comfortable with science, given that a key goal of the organization is to share the results
of scientic research conducted at universities with the lay public.
These distinctions merit further investigation to explore why
advisors working for different organizations have quite different
beliefs about climate change and the threats it poses to agriculture.
In addition, the signicant differences in climate change beliefs
between agricultural advisor groups highlight the need for adaptation communication and outreach to be tailored to a specic
audiencedeven within the agricultural community.
Another distinction, the fact that female advisors were more
likely to believe in anthropogenic climate change t with our expectations based on the risk perception literature. This nding is
consistent with Hypothesis 1 as well as previous research on risk
perception and communication, which has found that for
numerous environmental and health risks women are more concerned than men, many times even with the same education level
or scientic occupation (Barke et al., 1997; Slovic, 1999; Sundblad
et al., 2007).
5.2. Climate change beliefs and trust in information sources
Within the context of the SARF, this paper investigated advisors'
trust and distrust in a variety of sources of information about
climate change and its potential impacts. This study revealed that
University Extension and Scientists are the most trusted by Midwestern advisors, so they would be valuable partners to collaborate
with when communicating about climate change with this audience. Level of belief in anthropogenic climate change was signicantly correlated with trust in almost all sources of climate change
information. This provides support to the literature on relationships between trust and climate change beliefs among the general
public, but we cannot conrm a causal relationship between
climate change beliefs and level of trust in information sources, or
vice versa. However, it does appear that trust in information
sources could play an important role within the SARF, and has the
potential to increase or decrease risk perceptions, depending on the
context.
Level of belief in climate change was most strongly correlated
with trust in the IPCC and scientists, and was less important for the
other highly trusted source, University Extension. For advisors,
having an established relationship of positive interactions (such as
they are likely to have with the Extension) on a variety of issues is
likely to increase trust on the issue of climate change (Hardin,
2002). As proposed by several scholars, perceptions of similar
values, and an organization having the public's best interest in
mind, are linked to higher levels of trust in communication from
these sources (Earle & Cvetkovich, 1995; Poortinga & Pidgeon,
2003; Siegrist et al., 2000). These are possible explanations for
the high level of trust in Extension for information about climate
change and its impacts, despite the weaker correlation with belief
in climate change.
5.3. The availability heuristic
The results of this study are consistent with an availability
heuristic playing a role in how advisors perceive the risk from
climate change. 76% of agricultural advisors noticed more variable
or unusual weather in their area over the past 5 years. Similar to the
ndings of Haden et al. (2012) with farmers in California, perception of more variable weather was signicantly positively correlated with advisors' climate change beliefs. However, from this
cross-sectional survey we cannot say whether the availability
heuristic is causing advisors to be more concerned about climate
change, or whether those who already believe in climate change
their role in farm management. The fact that gender did not
signicantly predict the other two adaptation attitudes is likely due
to an indirect (or perhaps just weaker) relationship between
gender and attitudes, which was overshadowed by more direct
relationships between climate change beliefs, risk perceptions, and
noticing variable weather.
While overall most advisors agreed that farmers should adapt to
weather/climate change, 46% agreed or strongly agreed with the
statement, There is too much uncertainty about the effects of
climate change to justify advising others to change practices.
These results, along with majority agreement with the existence of
climate change t with some ndings from a recent study of
Scottish dairy farmers by Islam et al. (2013). Similar to Islam et al.
(2013) we found higher skepticism regarding the risk posed by
climate change than about its existence. However, a larger proportion of U.S. advisors than Scottish dairy farmers remain skeptical
about the role of human activities in climate change.
On a related note, it is interesting that belief in anthropogenic
climate change was positively correlated with adaptation attitudes,
since on the surface believing climate change is happening,
regardless of the cause, might be expected to result in more positive
attitudes toward adaptation. This relationship was similar to ndings by Arbuckle, Prokopy, et al. (2013) with Midwestern farmers,
and Haden et al. (2012) with California farmers. Perhaps those who
believe that climate change is mostly due to natural changes
expect less severe impacts than those who believe humans are
affecting the climate and pushing it outside historical limits or
experiences.
5.6. Limitations and future work
This study focused on agricultural advisors, a group that has a
signicant impact on U.S. agriculture and thus far has been the
subject of little researchdparticularly on the issue of climate
change. We tested new factors inuencing individual perception of
risk and attitudes within the SARF, including trust in information
sources, and the availability heuristic and increased our understanding of the U.S. agricultural sector's response to climate change.
As with all research, there are some limitations to this study.
First, this was a cross-sectional survey, so information was collected
at one point in time and we cannot denitively say that there are
causal relationships between variables. Another limitation is that
the constructs of interest (climate change beliefs, trust in information sources, adaptation attitudes etc.) were primarily measured
using ordinal level scales, necessitating the use of ordinal correlations and regressions. While these measures are not numeric, they
sufciently represent a majority of the variation in opinions,
particularly with regard to climate change beliefs.
The results of this study highlighted several potential areas for
further research. First, we explored moderating variables within
the SARF and found support with this population. These relationships could be tested with different contexts, audiences, and risks
to further improve the SARF. Longitudinal survey data would be
helpful for testing causality between climate change beliefs and
perceptions of variable weather (including specic extreme
weather events) to assess the role of the availability heuristic in
climate change risk perceptions. Longitudinal data could also be
useful for exploring causality between climate change beliefs and
trust in information sources. Why members of the agricultural
community trust and distrust particular organizations, individuals,
and agencies for climate change information should be explored
further through qualitative methods, with particular attention to
the role of organizational norms. As noted above, why different
types of advisors employed in distinct agricultural sectors believe
in or are skeptical about climate change and adaptation could be
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