Climate Change Awareness: Empirical Evidence For The European Union

CefES-DEMS Paper Series
Donatella Baiardi, Claudio Morana Climate change awareness:

Empirical evidence for the European
Union
No 246/January 2020
The Center for European Studies (CefES-DEMS) gathers scholars from different fields in Economics and
Political Sciences with the objective of contributing to the empirical and theoretical debate on Europe.
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at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3513061
https://ssrn.com/abstract=3513061
Climate change awareness: Empirical evidence for
the European Union
Donatella Baiardi+ and Claudio Morana y
+
University of Parma, Center for European Studies (CefES)
University of Milano-Bicocca, Center for European Studies (CefES),
Center for Research on Pensions and Welfare Policies (CeRP) and
Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis (RCEA).
December 2019
Abstract
In this paper we assess public attitudes on climate change in Europe over the last
decade. Based on aggregate …gures from the Special Eurobarometer surveys on Cli-
mate Change, we …nd that climate change attitudes have evolved according to the
“S -shaped”information dissemination model, conditional to various socioeconomic
and climatological factors. In particular, we …nd that environmental awareness is
directly related to per capita income, social trust, secondary education, the phys-
ical distress associated with hot weather and damages caused by extreme weather
episodes. It is also inversely related to greenhouse gas emissions and tertiary educa-
tion. Moreover, consistent with our epidemics narrative, we …nd a negative impact
for Donald Trump’s denial campaigns, yet a positive, larger e¤ect for Greta Thun-
berg’s environmental activism. In terms of policy implications, this paper calls on
the EU to take the vacant leadership in the climate change …ght and to make a
declaration of climate emergency. It also calls on teachers to introduce their stu-
dents to climate change, leading journals of communication of science-related topics
to grant the largest possible access to any climate change article they publish and
public institutions to protect climate change evidence from politicization. This pa-
per …nally calls for a strict coordination of monetary and …scal policies, to allow the
green bonds market to rapidly growth to the size required for the implementation
of e¤ective climate change mitigation policies.
Keywords: climate change, environmental attitude, green bonds, mitigation
policy, EU
JEL classi…cation: Q50, Q54, Q58
A previous version of this paper was presented at the International workshop NESPUTT 2019
(University of Milano-Bicocca). We are grateful to participants for constructive comments, particularly
to P. Natale. We are also grateful to S. Walter and L. Tiozzo for a kind help with the data.
y
Address for correspondence: Claudio Morana, Università di Milano - Bicocca, Dipartimento di
Economia, Metodi Quantitativi e Strategie di Impresa, Piazza dell’Ateneo Nuovo 1, 20126, Milano,
Italy. E-mail: claudio.morana@unimib.it.
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1 Introduction
What are public perceptions of climate change? Initially sparse in the early 1980s, when
the issue started to be widely acknowledged in most industrialized countries, public atti-
tudes towards climate change appear to have converged to current consensus levels within
the following two decades, as a consequence of growing scienti…c evidence and higher mass
media coverage and political debate (Dunlap, 1998; Nisbet and Myers, 2007; Boyko¤ and
Yulsman, 2013). International consensus on the urgency of climate change mitigation
also appears to have been achieved by mid-2000s. Yet awareness of the contribution of
various human activities to the phenomenon, such as energy use, animal farming, food
miles and waste, does not appear to have deepened much over time (Laiserowitz, 2008;
Attari et al., 2010; Brechin, 2010; Whitmarsh et al., 2011; Bailey et al., 2014).
The 2015 “Paris Agreement”represents the highest level of worldwide consensus ever
achieved since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, not only in relation to the existence of cli-
mate change, but also in relation to its human-made origin and the urgency to implement
mitigation and adaptation policies. Under the agreement, 196 countries have committed
to the goal of keeping the increase in global average temperature well below 2 C above
pre-industrial levels and, in particular, to limit this increase to 1.5 C, in order to reduce
the risks and impacts of climate change.
This achievement is even more noticeable as it follows a wave of skepticism, ongoing
since the late 2000s, which appears to have intensi…ed during Donald Trump’s electoral
campaign for the U.S. Presidency, his eventual U.S. Presidential election in 2016 and
his …nal announcement of withdrawing the U.S. from the agreement in June 2017 (Lais-
erowitz et al., 2014; 2017). President Trump, who has de…ned climate change as a “hoax”,
has unfailingly acted against the objectives of the Paris Agreement since the very begin-
ning of his mandate in November 2016, also dismantling many previous achievements in
environmental protection in the U.S.1
While this withdrawal cannot become e¤ective earlier than November 2020, his an-
nouncement has already impacted on the compliance prospects of the agreement by raising
the cost of emission cuts for compliant countries and aggravating the leadership de…cit
in addressing climate change.2 In this respect, recent evidence shows that, at current
greenhouse gas emissions, the carbon budget for meeting the Paris Agreement target of
2 C will be depleted in less than three decades, while less than a decade is left to limit the
increase in global temperature to 1.5 C.3 Yet these scenarios might be optimistic, since
greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing globally and there might be even no time
left to avoid large-scale discontinuities in the climate system (tipping points). Hence,
what might be left under control is not whether tipping will occur, but the rate at which
damages accumulate from tipping: “The stability and resilience of our planet is in peril.
International action -not just words- must re‡ect this”(Lenton et al., 2019).
In the light of the above evidence, understanding the drivers of climate change at-
1
See the running list maintained by The National Geographic:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/03/how-trump-is-changing-science-environment/
2
Yet denial is also occurring in Europe, where, likewise in the US, conservative and right-wing parties
tend to view climate change mitigation policies as threats to industries and business and skeptically work
against them (Vaidyanathan, 2014; Björnberg et al., 2017, Dunlap, 2013).
3
According to IPCC(2018), the atmosphere can absorb, calculated from end-2017, no more than 420
(1170) gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2 in order to stay below the 1.5 C (2 C) threshold. Since around 42 Gt of
CO2 is emitted globally every year, i.e. 1332 tonnes per second, this carbon budget is expected to be
used up in just about nine (twenty six) years.
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titudes is an important and urgent task, since in democratic systems the legitimacy of
political decisions on climate change mitigation actions relies on the support of public
opinion, which can be expected to be granted only once su¢ cient awareness of the eco-
nomic, human and social implications of climate change is achieved. In this paper we then
focus on the evolution of climate change awareness in Europe over the last decade. The
period investigated is most interesting, as it allows to assess how European climate change
attitudes might have been a¤ected by the “Paris Agreement”, President Trump’s election
and denial campaigns, and the environmentalists’response led by Greta Thunberg and
her “Fridays for future” movement.4 At the authors’knowledge, there are no other stud-
ies available in the literature which focus on data more recent than 2014. Moreover, our
assessment is based on the Special Eurobarometer surveys on Climate Change, which are
in-depth thematic studies integrated in Standard Eurobarometer’s polling waves, issued
every two years since 2009. Despite the Special Eurobarometer surveys are best suited to
provide an accurate view of climate change attitudes, they have been surprisingly fully
neglected in the literature so far. Finally, di¤erent from previous studies, our analysis is
focused on country’s aggregate survey results. Hence, this paper does …ll some important
gaps in the literature.
To anticipate the key results of this study, we …nd that climate change attitudes in
the EU are well described by the “S -shaped”information dissemination model, recently
reproposed by Shiller (2017). This model predicts that an “innovation”, when the decision
to adopt is voluntary, spreads across the members of a social system according to a
sigmoid pattern of adoption (the S-shaped curve), similarly to what occur for infectious
diseases. In our context the S -shape describes the evolution of climate change awareness,
conditional to various socioeconomic and climatological drivers. Consistent with the
public good nature of environmental quality, we then …nd a direct linkage between climate
change concerns and the level of income. Signi…cant e¤ects are also found for social trust,
greenhouse gas emissions, education, the physical distress associated with hot weather,
and the monetary damages in‡icted by extreme weather episodes. Moreover, consistent
with our epidemics narrative of climate change attitudes and expected role of opinion
leaders, we also …nd a signi…cant impact for Donald Trump’s denial campaigns and Greta
Thunberg’s environmental activism. The positive Greta e¤ect appears to have sizably
dominated the negative Trump e¤ect. Hence, climate change awareness in the EU has
deepened as a consequence of the con‡ict of opinions started with Trump’s Presidential
election.
Some policy implications follow from the above results. Firstly, this paper calls on the
European Union to take the vacant leadership in the climate change …ght and to make a
declaration of climate emergency. Secondly, it calls on teachers, at any education level,
to introduce their students to climate change and leading journals of communication of
science-related topics, such as Nature for instance, to grant the largest possible access to
any climate change article they publish. Moreover, in the light of the politicization of
climate change, it is important that scienti…c activity and evidence about climate change
be protected from any instrumental use, which might arise from political groups. Finally,
in order to grant an ordered transition to a low-carbon economy, this paper calls for a
strict coordination of monetary and …scal policies, to allow the green bonds market to
rapidly growth to the size required for the implementation of e¤ective climate change
4
Started as a “solo” protest in September 2018, the “Fridays for future” movement has rapidly
become a worldwide phenomenon, involving about 4 million people across 169 countries by September
2019, 500,000 of them participating to the last Global Climate Strike in Montreal on 27 September 2019.
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mitigation policies.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2 we review the existing
literature on climate change attitudes in the Europe. In Section 3 we provide some
stylized facts about climate change awareness for the EU member countries. In Section
4 we present the awareness dissemination model and its econometric speci…cation. Then,
in Section 5 we describe the data, in Section 6 we present the empirical results and in
Section 7 we conclude.
2 Literature review
Psychology has traditionally identi…ed three components of mind: cognition, a¤ect, and
conation. Cognition is the process of rationally understanding a phenomenon, through the
acquisition and processing of information. A¤ect refers to the emotional response to the
acquisition of this knowledge. Conation refers to the personal, intentional action, i.e. the
proactive behavioral response caused by the cognitive and a¤ective experiences (Tallon,
1997). The literature on environmental attitudes has explored all of the three above
components, i.e. the understanding of the climate change phenomenon, the emotions
associated with this knowledge and the actions taken to mitigate its impact and to adapt
to its e¤ects. In this respect, we point to the comprehensive surveys of Lorenzoni and
Pidgeon (2006), Upham et al. (2009) and Whitmarsh and Capstick (2018) for a broad
coverage of the topic.
Given the scope of the paper, below we focus on European evidence only, based
on periodical surveys authored by the European Commission (Eurobarometer) or other
international agencies. For instance, Wicker and Beckern (2013) analyze Eurobarometer
75.4 survey data, collected in June 2011 from a sample of 26,840 respondents. Survey
questions allow to assess both the perceived severity of climate change, relative to concerns
about energy availability and the economic situation, and any personal action taken by
respondents to …ght climate change during the six months before the interview. For
instance, questions cover the purchase of new low fuel consumption cars or new low-energy
homes, the consumption of locally produced and seasonal food and transport habits in
relation to alternatives to the use of private cars (walking, bike, public transport, car-
sharing). By means of linear regression analysis, they …nd a positive impact of education,
wealth and life satisfaction, as well as of concerns about economic, energy availability
and climatic conditions, on respondents’proactive behavior. Socio-demographic factors
also matter, since women and young people appear to be more active in environmental
protection than men and old people. The above …ndings are con…rmed by Meyer (2015),
using data from Eurobarometer 68.2 (November 2007-January 2008) and 75.2 (April-May
2011) and regression discontinuity analysis.
D’Amato et al. (2019) focus on determinants of environmentally-friendly behavior, in
relation to waste reduction, waste recycling, water saving and energy saving activities.
The data investigated are from three Special Eurobarometer surveys on attitudes of Eu-
ropean citizens towards the environment, collected in 2008, 2011 and 2014. By means of
a system of simultaneous linear regressions, they …nd a positive in‡uence of the level of
information, especially through internet sources, the level of trust on organization and
scientists, the level of GDP, and, in some cases, the level of mean temperature, envi-
ronmental expenditure and energy taxation, on environmentally-friendly behavior. Yet
a negative impact is found for tertiary education. Drews et al. (2018), using the same
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survey data, also …nd that respondents tend to view economic growth and environmen-
tal protection as compatible objectives, even prioritizing the environment in a trade-o¤
situation.
Poortinga et al. (2018) investigate data collected within Round 8 of the European
Social Survey. The sample consists of 44,387 respondents in 23 European countries (plus
Israel and Russia). The survey covers the areas of climate change beliefs, concerns and
environmental policy preferences. The evidence shows that about 90% of respondents
believe that climate is changing, also in consequence of human activities. Moreover,
despite 70% of respondents, on average, expect climate change e¤ects to be bad or very
bad, only 25% of interviewed citizens report to be very worried. Coherently, the majority
of respondents view as less than likely that they will undertake mitigation activities in
the near future, for instance in relation to their energy use.
A larger international sample is considered in Franzen and Vogl (2013), who use
data for 33 European and non European countries from the International Social Survey
Programme (ISSP) on environmental protection, for the years 1993, 2000, and 2010;
Smith and Mayer (2018), who analyze survey data for 35 countries from the Life in
Transition II Study (LITS II) conducted by the World Bank and the European Bank
for Reconstruction and Development in 2010. ISSP data are also employed by Lo and
Chow (2015). In particular, Franzen and Vogl (2013) construct an index of environmental
concern, subsuming its cognitive and conative components, as extracted from ISSP survey
questions. Smith and Mayer (2018) focus on the willingness to act to contrast climate
change. Lo and Chow (2015) consider the the ranking of climate change (importance
relative to other problems) and its associated danger (sense of insecurity and risk). By
means of panel regression techniques, Franzen and Vogl (2013) and Smith and Mayer
(2018) …nd a positive impact of education, social and institutional trust, GDP or per
capita GDP on environmental awareness. Smith and Mayer (2018) also …nd a positive
e¤ect for the perceived gravity of climate change, while Franzen and Vogl (2013) point
to signi…cant impacts of gender, age and political factors too. On the other hand, Lo
and Chow (2015) document a positive impact of per capita GDP on the relative ranking
of climate change across challenges, yet negative e¤ects of per capita GDP, energy use
and the Notre-Dame Gain (climate change adaptation) Index on its (absolute) perceived
gravity. See also the earlier studies of Diekkman and Franzen (1999), Sandvik (2008)
and Freymeyer and Johnson (2010), using various international survey data, concerning
European and non European consumers’environmental attitudes.
Interesting results are also reported in Frondel et al. (2017) and Andor et al. (2018),
based on survey data collected by the German institute forsa Gesellschaft für Sozial-
forschung und statistische Analysen. The survey counts more than 6,000 respondents,
representative of the population of German speaking households aged 14 and above. The
survey is updated regularly and available for various years and increasing sample size, i.e.
2012 (6,404 respondents), 2013 (6,522 respondents), 2014 (6,602 respondents) and 2015
(7,077 respondents). In particular, Frondel et al. (2017) focus on the association of public
perception of climate change with heat waves, storms and ‡oods, and their …nancial and
physical costs. On the other hand, Andor et al. (2018) consider the perceived importance
of taking action against climate change. By means of ordered logit regression estimation,
they …nd that personal experience with adverse natural events has a positive impact on
higher environmental awareness, particularly if based on personal damage, and that the
elders are not likely to personally engage in …ghting climate change or to support policy
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measures aiming at climate change mitigation.5 Survey data, based on respondents in
Germany only (about 1,000), are also employed in Schwirplies (2018). In particular, per-
ceptions about climate change are assessed in relation to global warming, climate change
mitigation policies, i.e. the development of renewable energy sources and energy-e¢ cient
technologies, and climate change adaptation policies, i.e. the construction of infrastruc-
tures to protect against future natural disruptions. By means of bivariate ordered probit
regressions, she …nds that support for mitigation and adaptation actions positively cor-
relates with the recognition of the anthropogenic origin of climate change (responsibility
factor), the view that these actions can still be e¤ective and political support to the green
party. On the other hand, a negative linkage is found for the level of income and mixed
e¤ects for education.
3 Stylized facts about climate change awareness in

the European Union
Our proxy variables for climate change awareness are based on aggregate country …gures,
retrieved from the Special Eurobarometer surveys on Climate Change, collected every two
years, over the period 2009-2019.6 Hence, we provide an up to date assessment of climate
change attitudes, based on specialized survey studies.
More speci…cally, our analysis is focused on the following questions: “Which of the
following do you consider to be the single most serious problem facing the world as a
whole?”, “Which others do you consider to be serious problems?”, “And how serious
a problem do you think climate change is at this moment?”. These questions cover
the cognitive component of climate change awareness, also in relation to its emotional
component, assuming that a negative feeling is associated with the environmental concern,
whose intensity is proportional to the degree of perceived gravity of the environmental
problem.
In the …rst two cases, we use the percentage of respondents that identify climate
change as the single most serious global challenge in each country (QB1a) or that rank
climate change the second to fourth most serious global challenge (QB1b).7 On the other
hand, with regard to the third question, we select those respondents who consider climate
change as a serious problem (QB2s) and as a very serious problem (QB2vs), by assigning
scores within ranges 5-6 and 7-10, respectively (in a scale from 1 to 10, with “1”meaning it
is “not at all a serious problem”and “10”meaning it is “an extremely serious problem”).
Moreover, we also aggregate the above …gures and obtain three additional proxy vari-
ables. The aggregation of QB1a and QB1b yields the percentage of respondents who
rank climate change as one of the …rst four most important global challenges (QB1); the
aggregation of QB2s and QB2vs yields the percentage of respondents who consider cli-
5
Siegrist and Gutscher (2006) also …nd that survey respondents who live in areas of “no ‡ood risk”
in Switzerland have lower perceptions of risk than respondents who live in areas at ‡ood risk. Yet
Whitmarsh (2008) …nds that ‡ood victims in South of England di¤er very little from other survey
respondents in their assessment of climate change.
6
We consider results by volumes, with reference to data distributed in Volume C (Country/socio-
demographics). The issues investigated are no. 322 (2009), 372 (2011), 409 (2013), 435 (2015), 459
(2017) and 490 (2019).
7
Beyond climate change, the other possible answers are: international terrorism, poverty, hunger
and lack of drinking water, spread of infectious diseases, the economic situation, proliferation of nuclear
weapons, armed con‡icts, increasing global population and others.
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mate change at least a serious problem (QB2), giving a score within the range 5-10; the
interaction (product) of QB1 and QB2 yields the percentage of respondents who rank
climate change as one of the …rst four most important challenges and at least of serious
gravity (QB1QB2). All these series are employed in our study as alternative proxy vari-
ables for environmental awareness, i.e. yt = QB1a, QB1b, QB2s, QB2vs, QB1, QB2,
QB1QB2.
3.1 The empirical evidence

As shown in Table 1, (on average) 58% of the interviewed EU citizens in 2019 view climate
change as one of the …rst four major global challenges (Panel C) and 22% of them rank
it as the most important one (Panel A). Moreover, concerning its gravity, 16% of the
respondents view it as a serious issue (Panel D) and 77% of them as a very serious threat
(Panel E).
The comparison with earlier Eurobarometer results shows that EU environmental at-
titudes have not evolved linearly over time. For instance, (on average) climate change is
ranked within the …rst four most important challenges by 50% of the respondents already
in 2009 (Panel C). This …gure does not alter sizably until 2019 (+6% (12%) relatively to
2009 (2017)), apart from the most sizable contraction occurred in 2017 (-7% relatively
to 2009). Similarly, 18% of the respondents rank climate change as the most important
threat already in 2009 (Panel A). This …gure then sizably raises in 2019 (+4% (9%)
relative to 2009 (2017)). A more steady pattern is shown by the perceived gravity of
the phenomenon, since already in 2009 63% of the respondents consider climate change
at least a serious problem (Panel F). This …gure then increases to about 67% over the
three following survey periods, to 72% in 2017 and, eventually, to 77% in 2019. Simi-
lar information is provided by our overall climate change awareness measure QB1QB2
(Panel G). In fact, according to interacted …gures, (on average) in 2009 already 45% of
respondents regard climate change as one of the …rst four most important challenges and
at least of serious gravity. A sizable drop can then be noted in 2017 and an even more
sizable increase in 2019 (+9% (14%) relative to 2009 (2017)).
In Figure 1 we compare cross-sectional distribution patterns in years 2009 and 2019.
Density estimation is performed through (Gaussian) kernel smoothing, under optimal
bandwidth selection. As shown in Figure 1, distributional dynamics provide additional
insights on raising climate change awareness in the EU over the last decade. For instance,
evidence of emerging polarization or bi-modality can be noticed in the distribution of
QB1a, consistent with the formation of a group of (leading) countries for which climate
change might have become the most important challenge. A similar message is conveyed
by the shrinking dispersion in the distribution of QB1b, showing that, over time, the
assessment of climate change as a most important challenge (within the …rst four most
important ones) has become more homogeneous across countries. Coherently, the dis-
tribution of QB1 (sum of QB1a and QB1b) shows a clear-cut rightward shift in 2019
relative to 2009.
Moreover, not only the distribution of the respondents that view climate change as
a very serious problem shows a rightward shift (QB2vs), but also the distribution of
the respondents that view climate change as an at least serious problem shows a similar
pattern, pointing to an overall increase in the European population that is aware of the
gravity of climate change. A rightward shift is also shown by the distribution of the
interacted variable QB1QB2, which still appears to be bimodal in 2019, yet of shrinking
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dispersion relative to 2009 …gures.
The overall conclusion that can be drawn from the above results is that climate
change awareness in the EU has deepened over time, yet not according to a linear pace.
Most interesting are the sizable drop in 2017 and the even more sizable raise in 2019.
These changes might be possibly associated with the activity of two opinion leaders,
Donald Trump and Greta Thunberg, who surely have a¤ected climate change attitudes
worldwide over the last three years. In this respect, the 2017 contraction might convey
information on the e¤ects of Donald Trump’s denial campaigns and announcement of
withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement in June 2017. While this
withdrawal cannot become e¤ective earlier than November 2020, his announcement has
already impacted on the compliance prospects of the agreement by raising the cost of
emission cuts for compliant countries and aggravating the leadership de…cit in addressing
climate change. His politicization of climate change has also been putting at risk the
authority of scienti…c evidence on climate change to some extent. On the other hand,
the sizable 2019 raise in EU environmental attitudes might elicit information on the
public response to Greta Thunberg’s environmental activism and her “Fridays for future
movement”. Greta Thunberg’ “solo” protest, started in September 2018, has rapidly
become a worldwide phenomenon, involving about 4 million people across 169 countries
by September 2019. Over the last year, Greta Thunberg has also participated to various
high-pro…le events across Europe and the U.S., including U.N. climate meetings. In
March 2019 she was nominated for the Nobel Prize and in May 2019 she was named
one of the world’s most in‡uential people by the Time magazine. She was eventually
nominated Person of the Year in December 2019 by the same magazine.
4 A narrative epidemics of climate change awareness

Nonlinearity and the potential role played by opinion leaders, as highlighted by the above
descriptive analysis, are reminiscent of the “S -shaped”information dissemination model,
recently reproposed by Shiller (2017). This model predicts that an “innovation”, when the
decision to adopt is voluntary, spreads across the members of a social system according to
a sigmoid pattern of adoption (the S-shaped curve), similarly to what occur for infectious
diseases. In our context, the S -shape, which describes the evolution of climate change
awareness, is modelled through the following logistic function
1
y= ; (1)
1 + exp ( x0 )
where y is a given proxy for climate change awareness, x is a vector of socio-demographic,
economic, political and climatological control variables and the associated vector of
parameters.
Standard theory posits that the S -shape originates from the engagement of opinion
leaders, who actively di¤use the innovation and introduce the other potential adopters;
the characteristics (complexity) of the innovation; the capability of adoption of the social
system, which depends on socio-demographic, economic and political characteristics.
Adoption then proceeds through a multi-stage process of assessment, acceptance and
assimilation. Yet it takes time for new ideas and concepts to become widely accepted.
Indeed, the sigmoid pattern foresees a very slow rate of dissemination for a new idea in
its inception. Yet if the di¤usion of the new concept persists over time, what initially is
accepted only by a few - and possibly ridiculed or even opposed by most - successively
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enters the mainstream and is accepted as self-evident and given by the majority of people.
While this pattern is traditionally grounded in the Kermack-McKendrick model of dis-
ease epidemics, the progressive saturation process is also reminiscent of the earlier, more
general view expressed by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenauer (1788-1860), at
the time of the publication of his chief book, The World as Will and Representation:
“The truth is always destined to have only one brief victory parade between two long time
spans in which it is …rst being condemned as paradoxical and then belittled as trivial.”8
The above quote well exempli…es the philosophical grounding of our theory of climate
change awareness, mathematically speci…ed by the logistic dissemination equation.
4.1 The econometric speci…cation

The econometric speci…cation of the climate change awareness dissemination equation is
1
yt = ; (2)
1 + exp x0t 1 +"t
where y is a given proxy for climate change awareness, x is a vector of control variables
and its associated vector of parameters, "t jxt 1 i:i:d:N (0; 2 ). The model can be
easily linearized, yielding the OLS estimable function
1
ln( 1) = x0t 1 +"t ; (3)
yt
which, for our panel of 28 countries, becomes
yi;t = x0i;t 1 +"i;t ; (4)
1
where yi;t = ln( 1), i is the country index, which refers to each of the 28 current EU
yi;t
member countries9 and t is the temporal index, which refers to years 2009 through 2019,
apart from Croatia, for which we have data only since 2013. Hence, the panel counts 166
observations in total, since our proxy variables for climate change awareness are available
at the biannual frequency.
Linearization grants that the transformed dependent variable can take values on the
whole set of real numbers, consistent with the assumption of conditional Gaussianity for
the error term. In order to improve numerical accuracy, the non-negative explanatory
xij;t min(xj )
variables are transformed according to the function xij;t = , where
max(xj ) min(xj )
xij;t is the country i, time period t panel observation for the generic regressor j; max(xj )
and min(xj ) are the maximum and minimum values for the generic regressor j over the
panel sample, respectively. Then, by construction, the transformed regressors take values
in the [0; 1] interval.
Hence, the …nal econometric speci…cation is
8
Der Wahrheit ist allerzeit nur ein kurzes Siegesfest beschieden, zwischen den beiden langen ZeitrÄau-
men, wo sie als Paradox verdammt und als Trivial gering geschÄatzt wird. [The World as Will and
Representation, Preface to the First Edition, p. xxv; German: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung].
9
The current E.U. member states are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark,
Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg,
Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and United Kingdom.
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yi;t = xi;t0
+"i;t 1 (5)
and comparison between (1) and (2) yields ^ = ^ .
The reduced form model is a natural setting for the investigation of the data at hand,
since survey results are collected in March/April and therefore much earlier than the
contemporaneous control variables are available. Accordingly, all the regressors sampled
at the annual frequency enter the speci…cation with a one year lag. When missing, as in
few cases, 2018 …gures have been replaced with their 2017 values. Given the reduced form
speci…cation of the econometric model, OLS estimation is expected to provide consistent
and asymptotically e¢ cient estimates.
5 The data
The proxy variables for climate change awareness are denoted by the variable yt = QB1a,
QB1b, QB2s, QB2vs, QB1, QB2, QB1QB2. All these series have already been described
in the Section dedicated to the descriptive analysis, to which we refer. On the other hand,
in the set of regressors xt in (4) we include various control variables for the underlying
socio-demographic, economic and political environment and academic and non-academic
information sources.
5.1 The underlying socioeconomic environment

Concerning the factors a¤ecting the underlying socio-demographic and economic environ-
ment, we …rstly posit a role for two opinion leaders, i.e. U.S. President Donald Trump
(“brown” leader) and Greta Thunberg (“green” leader), whose activities might be best
associated with events occurred in 2017 and 2019, respectively. Hence, two dummy vari-
ables are included:
An impulse time dummy for year 2017 (DT ), to control for the potential impact
of Donald Trump denial campaigns, dismantling of environmental protection in the
U.S. and announcement of the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Agreement in
2017.
An impulse time dummy for year 2019 (GT ), to control for the potential impact of
Greta Thunberg’s environmental activism and her “Fridays for Future”movement,
which, while started in 2018, has become a worldwide phenomenon already in early
2019.
Secondly, we posit that social capability to assimilate, in relation to climate change in-
formation, might be higher when the cultural context is already environmentally-friendly.
For instance, this is re‡ected by nutrition and transport habits, e¢ ciency of energy
use, citizens’ support for progressive/pro-environmental political parties (D’Amato et
al., 2019; Schwirplies, 2018). While the connection between greenhouse gas emissions
and transports is well understood, the impact of intensive animal farming has been much
less debated in the literature. In this respect, total greenhouse gases emissions from global
livestock is currently about 7.1 Gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent per year, representing 14.5
percent of all anthropogenic emissions.10 Hence, following a vegetarian/vegan nutrition
10
See, for instance, some recent assessments of the Food and Agricultur Organization of the United
Nations available at: http://www.fao.org/news/story/it/item/197623/icode/
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diet might be related to the conative component of climate change awareness, in terms
of the attempt to reduce one’s own carbon footprint. Moreover, a lower environmental
concern might be expected in countries ruled by right-wing/conservative parties, which
generally represent the interests of business and industries in most Western countries
(Franzen and Vogl, 2013). Then, our control variables for social capability are:
An index of vegetarian/health attitudes (V H), measured by the percentage of people

with no daily consumption of fruit and vegetables. The series is available from
Eurostat for each EU members for year 2014 only. Since this variable is time-
invariant, it also controls for stochastic country e¤ects.
An index of passengers cars e¢ ciency (CO2), measured by the average CO2 emis-
sions per km from new passenger cars. The series is available annually for each EU
member country from the European Environment Agency and Eurostat.
An index of energy productivity (EN E), measured by the amount of economic
output that is produced per unit of gross available energy in Euro per kilogram of
oil equivalent (KGOE). It is available annually for each of the EU member countries
from Eurostat.
The Environmental Performance Index (EP I), which provides an overall assess-
ment of a country’s environmental sustainability (environmental health and ecosys-
tem vitality), using a proximity-to-target methodology. It is jointly computed by
the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy (YCELP; Yale University),
Columbia University Center for International Earth Science Information Network
(CIESIN), and the World Economic Forum (WEF). It is available annually for each
of the EU countries (https://epi.envirocenter.yale.edu/).
Two political indexes measuring Government political composition. The …rst index
is cabinet posts of right-wing parties in percentage of total cabinet posts, weighted
by the number of days in o¢ ce in a given year (GRC). The second index is rela-
tive power position of right-wing parties in government, based on their seat share
in parliament, measured in percentage of the total parliamentary seat share of all
governing parties, weighted by the number of days in o¢ ce in a given year (GRP ).
Both indexes are available annually for each EU countries. The source is the Com-
parative Political Data Set 1960-2017, compiled by the Institute of Political Science
of the University of Berne (https://www.cpds-data.org/).
The dissemination process might also be expected to proceed at a quicker pace in

countries with a relatively higher proportion of young people in the total population.
This is due to the young’s higher ability to adapt to changes, as well as being the most
exposed generation to the impact of climate change, which will manifest in full only in
the years to come. For this reason, the elders might be more concerned with other risks,
such as economic and …nancial conditions and international terrorism, and less likely to
support the allocation of public resources to …ght climate change (Franzen and Vogl,
2013). Yet caring for children or grandchildren’s future living conditions might enhance
their environmental concern. To control for demographic e¤ects, we then include:
The ratio of young people in the total population (Y T H), as measured by the
ratio of population from 15 to 29 years in total population. The series is available
annually for each of the EU member countries from Eurostat.
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Moreover, according to the risk perception view, women are more risk averse than men,
consistent with their traditional role of taking care of other individuals in the household.
Hence, it can be expected that empowering women in relation to the implementation of
mitigation policies might positively a¤ect environmental awareness (at least in terms of
its conative component). To control for gender e¤ects, we then include:
The Global Gender Gap Index (GGG), which measures the gap between men and
women in four fundamental categories, i.e. Economic Participation and Opportu-
nity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival and Political Empowerment; the
Political Empowerment Subindex (P EG) of the above Global Gender Gap Index,
which measures the gender gap in relation to political participation only. In both
cases, the highest possible score is 1 (equality) and the lowest possible score is 0
(inequality). The source of both series is the World Bank.
Two other potentially relevant variables are a country’s private and public sectors
ability to mobilize …nancial resources to reduce climate change vulnerability and the
degree of trust that the country’s citizen have in the actions that can be taken by the same
institutions. While the former variable yields a measure of a country’s potential ability to
manage climate change, the latter one provides information on how much this potentiality
might be translated into e¤ective action. In this respect, a high potential ability to
manage climate change might have a negative impact on environmental awareness, due
to perceived lower pressure to undertake corrective actions (Lo and Chow, 2015). On
the other hand, a positive linkage between awareness and trust in private and public
institutions might originate from the nature of public good of environmental protection.
Then, a higher trust in others might reveal a higher concern for public goods, as well
as the belief that others will cooperate to provide and maintain public goods (Franzen
and Vogl, 2013; Smith and Mayer, 2018). In order to control for these further country’s
capability e¤ects, we then include:
The Notre-Dame Gain Index (N DG), which measures the ability (on a scale from
0 to 100) a country has to face climate change. It is computed from the di¤erence
of an index of country’s readiness to mobilize …nancial resources to mitigate its
exposition to climate change and an index of country’s vulnerability or inability
to face the potential adverse e¤ects of climate change. The index is computed
by the University of Notre-Dame (US), within the Notre-Dame Global Adaptation
Initiative and is available annually (http://gain.org).
A trust index (T RT ), computed by averaging the rating (0-10) of trust in police,
the legal system, the political system and in others, by all citizens aged 16 years
or over. The four component series of the index are available from Eurostat for all
EU member countries, for year 2013 only. Since this variable is time-invariant, it
also controls for stochastic country e¤ects.
Finally, we posit a role for technical progress, consistent with the environmental
Kuznets curve/green Solow model theory (Brock and Taylor, 2010). Accordingly, fac-
tor saving technical progress leads to both economic development and the adoption of
more environmentally friendly/energy saving production techniques. Then, an inverse-U
shaped relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and per capita GDP can be posited,
i.e. the existence of a threshold income level beyond which greenhouse gas emissions de-
crease and economic development becomes sustainable. Moreover, as citizens enjoy a
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higher standard of living, they value more postmaterialistic values and public goods,
such as the quality of life in general and, therefore, of the environment too. Hence, fur-
ther income increases beyond its threshold level are also associated with an increase in
the demand for environmental protection, i.e. with a raise in environmental awareness
(Inglehart, 1995; Diekkman and Franzen, 1999; Franzen and Meyer, 2010). We name
this direct linkage between climate change concerns and the level of income (larger than
the threshold value) the “climate change/environmental awareness curve”. Hence, we
include
The level of real per capita GDP (GDP ), as a proxy for the e¤ects of technical
progress and as a measure of income. The series is the chain linked volumes (2010)
Euro per capita gross domestic product at market prices, available from Eurostat
for each of the EU members.
An interesting mechanism also works through the responsibility recognition of the

anthropogenic origin of climate change and, therefore, of a country’s contribution to the
phenomenon. This might explain a direct linkage between emissions and environmental
awareness (Schwirplies, 2018). Also the level of environmental taxation might reveal this
assumption of responsibility, yet in relation to the conative dimension of climate change
awareness (D’Amato et al., 2019). We then include:
Greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and the level of environmental taxes (ET ), in
order to control for a responsibility assumption e¤ect. The greenhouse gas emissions
series is the level of total (all NACE activities) greenhouse gases (CO2, N2O in CO2
equivalent, CH4 in CO2 equivalent) Kilogram per capita emissions. The level of
environmental taxes is measured by the ratio of total environmental taxes to gross
domestic product. Both series are available from Eurostat for any EU member.
In terms of parameters in (1), we then expect a positive linkage between climate

change awareness and GDP , GHG, ET , GT , CO2, EN E, Y N G, T RT; EP I; P E; GGG
and a negative impact for DT , H, N DG, GRC, GRP .
5.2 Knowledge about climate change

The acquisition and processing of information might be expected to exercise a crucial role
in the development of the cognitive dimension of climate change awareness (Franzen and
Vogl, 2013; Smith and Mayer, 2018). In this respect, both academic and non-academic
sources of information might matter.
5.2.1 Theoretical knowledge about climate change

To the academic sources belong the information acquired during primary, secondary and
tertiary education. In this respect, an introduction to climate change might be expected
to have been provided to European citizens, particularly at primary and secondary edu-
cation levels, which are more broadly di¤used across citizens and generalist in nature.11
11
See for instance the Resource Guide for Advanced Learning on Integrating Climate Change
in Education at Primary and Secondary Level developed as part of the 2011-2013 pilot imple-
mentation phase of The One UN Climate Change Learning Partnership (UN CC:Learn), available at
https://www.uncclearn.org/sites/default/…les/inventory/resource_guide_on_integrating_cc_in_education_primary_a
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Moreover, education provides citizens with the skills required for critically assessing in-
formation ‡ows. More in general, education can make individuals more concerned with
overall social welfare, including the external bene…ts of their actions.
Yet, concerning the e¤ects of tertiary education, the available evidence is not clear-cut.
For instance, a positive impact is reported in Wicker and Beckern (2013), while a negative
impact in D’Amato et al. (2019). This …nding raises the issue of whether undesirable side
e¤ects, such as cognitive bias or self-denial, can originate from improved critical assess-
ment abilities and the accumulation of specialized knowledge - at least in …elds di¤erent
from climate sciences. For instance, a Dunning-Kruger cognitive bias arises when people
assess their cognitive ability and knowledge as greater than it is. In relation to climate
change attitudes, the cognitive bias might translate into self-manufactured uncertainty
about climate change evidence and, therefore, skepticism. Moreover, a self-denial type
of behavior can also emerge out of a Freudian psychic self-protection mechanism from
actual or perceived threats, which includes denial, repression, undoing, rationalization
and displacement by the rational ego. Indeed, the implications of climate change are
highly uncomfortable, also in terms of changes in lifestyle and habits.
On the other hand, various printed and online media belong to the non-academic
source, such as, for instance, newspapers, scienti…c blogs and magazines. Hence, con-
cerning the factors which might contribute to the accumulation of theoretical knowledge
about climate change, we include:
The level of education, measured by the percentages of total population (aged

from 15 to 64 years) with a secondary (SEC) and a tertiary (T ER) education
level, respectively. Both series are available annually for the various EU member
countries from Eurostat.
A volume index for climate change media coverage. The index is computed from the
average monthly volume of media articles in which the words “climate change”are
cited more than 3 times over the three months preceding the survey, i.e. January,
February and March. The index is available for years 2015, 2017 and 2019, for 25
of the EU member countries (data are missing from Germany, Rumenia, Latvia).
The source is the Centre for Advanced Studies of the European Commission, Joint
Research Centre (uno¢ cial database produced under the Big Data and Forecast-
ing of Economic Developments (bigNOMICS) project). Given the time mismatch,
this information is included through three separate variables, one for each of the
available years, i.e. M C15, M C17, M C19.
Two proxy variables for the accumulation of information about climate change de-
velopments, obtained through non-academic sources, i.e. the level of internet access
(IA) and the Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) Index. Internet access data are
computed as the percentage of total households which dispose of internet access.
They are are available annually for the various EU member countries from Euro-
stat. The Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) Index yields an overall measure
of Atlantic hurricanes intensity season by season and, therefore, of their evolving
destructive potential. The ACE index is calculated by squaring the maximum sus-
tained surface wind in the system every six hours (knots) and summing it up for
the season (it is expressed in 104 kt2). ACE …gures are available annually from
the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).12 Since ACE
12
Data can be be found at http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/E11.html.
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is country-invariant, it also controls for stochastic time e¤ects. Since no Atlantic
hurricane has made landfall on European costs, we use ACE to convey information
on the the feedback e¤ects of climate change, which can be acquired from printed
and online media.
In terms of parameters in (1), we then expect a positive linkage between climate

change awareness and SEC, IA and ACE: On the other hand, we do not have any
a priori assumptions concerning T ER, also consistent with the non clear-cut evidence
provided in the literature.
5.2.2 Practical knowledge about climate change

In addition to “theoretical” knowledge, also the direct “experience” of climate change
should be considered. This is associated with the appreciation of the human, monetary
and physical impact of climate change, i.e. the damages and fatalities caused by extreme
weather episodes, as well as the direct experience of heatwaves, heavy rainfalls or ‡oods,
droughts, sandstorms, windstorms, or avalanches (Andor et al., 2018). Perceptions of
perceived changes in temperature (D’Amato et al., 2019) and related use of heating and
cooling facilities over the year also belong to this category. Hence, concerning the factors
which might contribute to the accumulation of practical knowledge about climate change,
we include:
A proxy variable for the human impact of climate change, as measured by the
number of fatalities caused by extreme weather and climate related events (F AT ),
which is available as cumulative …gure (1980-2017) for each EU member country
from the European Environmental Agency.
Two proxy variables for the monetary impact of climate change, as measured by the
overall losses generated by meteorological, hydrological and climatological events
(extreme weather and climate related events). These data are available annually
in million Euro for the EU economy as a whole (LOSS) and as per capita euro
cumulative …gures (1980-2017) for each EU member country (EU LOSS) from the
European Environment Agency (EEA) and Eurostat, respectively. The annual
overall EU series is de‡ated by means of the EU average harmonized consumer
price index, which is also available from Eurostat.
Four indicators of perceived climatological change, in relation to its physical im-
pact, i.e. the number of cooling and heating degree days (COOL and HEAT ), the
European temperature anomaly (T EM P ), the negative component of the Southern
Oscillation Index (SOI ). The number of cooling and heating degree days (COOL
and HEAT ) yield a measure of the intensity of the use of cooling and heating
facilities, respectively. These data are available annually for each of the EU mem-
ber countries from the European Environment Agency (EEA) and Eurostat. The
European temperature anomaly (T EM P ) is the average annual mean near surface
temperature deviation in Celsius, which is expected to directly convey information
on global warming. This series is available annually from the Met O¢ ce Hadley
Centre and Climatic Research Unit (HadCRUT4 dataset) and Eurostat. The South-
ern Oscillation Index measures the timing and intensity of the El Niño-La Niña or
ENSO cycle. SOI measures the bimodal variation in sea level barometric pressure
between observation stations at Darwin (Australia) and Tahiti, and is expressed
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in standardized units.13 Positive values corresponds to La Niña (cool) episodes,
while negative values to El Niño (warm) episodes. In Europe, El Niño episodes are
associated with hotter summers and wetter and warmer autumns and early win-
ters (Martin et al., 2018). While the ENSO cycle is a natural phenomenon, global
warming can be expected to enhance its intensity (see Morana and Sbrana (2019)
and references therein). Hence, in addition to control for persistent temperature
changes originating from El Niño e¤ects, we also include the negative component
of the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI ) as a source of additional information on
climate change.
In terms of parameters in (1), we then expect a positive linkage between COOL

and climate change awareness, as an increase in COOL means an increase in the number
of days in which cooling facilities are employed, likely in response to the physical distress
originated by very hot weather. Similarly, we expect a positive impact for temperature
(T EM P ). On the other hand, we expect a negative linkage between HEAT and climate
change awareness, as a contraction in this series means a decrease in the number of
days in which a heating facility has been employed, as consequence of the trend increase
in temperature, i.e. global warming. A negative linkage between SOI and climate
change awareness can also be expected, as the more negative the realization in SOI and
the more intense the El Niño phase and, therefore, the warmer summer to early winter
weather. Notice that LOSS, SOI and T EM P , by being country-invariant, also allow
to control for stochastic time e¤ects; moreover, by being temporal-invariant, F AT and
LOSS control for stochastic country e¤ects too.
6 Estimation results
Given the large set of potential regressors available, we implement a general to speci…c
speci…cation strategy. Through a sequential reduction procedure grounded on statisti-
cal testing, this approach yields a …nal parsimonious econometric model, describing the
phenomenon of interest. Still within this framework and in the light of the results of
the descriptive analysis, we also carry out an impulse saturation analysis (Hendry et al.,
2008; Johansen and Nielsen, 2009). The saturated regression analysis allows to assess the
robustness of our …ndings to two potential sources of model misspeci…cation, i.e. outliers,
which can be attributed to events gone unaccounted in the model, and structural change,
i.e. shifting distributions, in terms of sudden location shifts and changes in the trend
rate of growth. Moreover, within both the standard and saturated estimation settings,
we double check the validity of the reduction process by carrying out variable-by-variable
omission tests.
The results of the econometric analysis are reported in Tables 2-5. In particular, we
report the (…nal) econometric models in Tables 2-3, while we report the results of the
omission tests in Tables 4-5. In all cases, results are reported for any of the proxy variables
for climate change awareness employed in the study, i.e. QB1a, QB1b, QB2s, QB2vs,
QB1, QB2, QB1QB2. Moreover, in the tables we report the estimated parameters, as
delivered by the transformation ^ = ^ .
13
SOI data are available at https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/teleconnections/enso/indicators/soi/.
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6.1 Results for the benchmark proxy variable
We initially focus our discussion on our preferred proxy variable for climate change aware-
ness QB1QB2, which measures the percentage of respondents who rank climate change
as one of the …rst four most important global threats (QB1) and view this challenge as
at least of serious gravity (QB2). As shown in Table 2, the explanatory power of the
model, as measured by both the adjusted (64%) and unadjusted (67%) coe¢ cients of
determination, is highly satisfactory.
According to our results, over the last decade climate change awareness has increased
with the level of per capita income (GDP ), yet at a decreasing rate, due to the damp-
ening e¤ect yield by its squared value (GDP 2). We name this relationship the “climate
change/environmental awareness curve”. This curve describes the direct linkage between
climate change concerns and the level of income and it is theoretically motivated by the
public good nature of environmental quality, whose demand increases with the level of
income (Diekkman and Franzen, 1999; Franzen and Meyer, 2010). This curve is naturally
related to the “environmental Kuznets curve”, which describes an inverse-U shaped rela-
tionship between greenhouse gas emissions and the level of per capita income. Once the
threshold income level is crossed, economic development becomes sustainable, i.e. higher
income levels are associated with lower emissions, and, in our framework, also with higher
climate change awareness.
Signi…cant e¤ects are also found for social trust and greenhouse gas emissions, which
enter the regression equation interacted with per capita income (T RU ST GDP and
GHGGDP ). Hence, these variables a¤ect the slope of the environmental awareness
equation, amplifying and dampening the e¤ects of income, respectively. The former re-
sult is consistent with the nature of public good of environmental protection, as the
higher social trust and the higher the concern for public goods and the belief that others
(citizens and institutions) will cooperate to provide and maintain public goods (Franzen
and Vogl, 2013; Smith and Mayer, 2018). Moreover, the negative impact of greenhouse
gas emissions is consistent with the downward slope prevailing over the portion of the
environmental Kuznets curve corresponding to the levels of income pertaining to the en-
vironmental awareness curve, i.e. those larger than the threshold value. Hence, we do
not …nd evidence of a responsibility e¤ect at the aggregate level (Schwirplies, 2018).
Consistent with our epidemics narrative of climate change attitudes and expected role
of opinion leaders, we also …nd a signi…cant impact for Donald Trump’s denial campaigns
and Greta Thunberg’s environmental activism. The positive Greta e¤ect appears to have
sizably dominated the negative Trump e¤ect. Hence, climate change awareness in the
EU has deepened in consequence of the con‡ict of opinions started with Trump’s Presi-
dential election, which has then contributed an overall upward shift in the environmental
awareness curve (in the income-awareness space).
Moreover, consistent with previous …ndings, we also …nd a signi…cant impact of edu-
cation on environmental attitudes formation. In this respect, we …nd a positive linkage
between secondary education (SEC) and climate change awareness (Franzen and Vogl,
2013; Smith and Mayer, 2018). Yet a negative, dampening e¤ect is found for tertiary ed-
ucation (T ER) (see also D’Amato et al., 2019). This result implies that, ceteris paribus,
the higher the percentage of citizens with tertiary education and the higher climate change
skepticism. Translating psychological theories formulated for the behavior of a single in-
dividual into considerations holding at the overall country level does not appear to be
immediate. Yet cognitive bias and self-denial are fascinating explanations, we would not
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dismiss.
Finally, we also detect an important contribution from the experience of climate
change e¤ects, in relation to the physical distress associated with hot weather and the
damages in‡icted by extreme weather episodes. In particular, concerning the experi-
ence of raising temperatures (global warming), our analysis points to cooling degree days
(COOL), i.e. the intensity of usage of cooling devices, as an important driver of climate
change awareness. This is consistent also with other available results in the literature
(D’Amato et al., 2019), which show that the appreciation of global warming might help
to deepen one’s perception of climate change. Similar considerations hold for the expe-
rience of the e¤ects of extreme weather episodes (Andor et al., 2018), in terms of their
in‡icted monetary damages (LOSS). Monetary damages enter the econometric model
also interacted with GDP (LOSSGDP ) and provide a dampening mechanism for the
e¤ects of income, by ‡attening the slope of the environmental awareness equations (in
the awareness-income space). This is consistent with the fact that a country’s ability to
face climate change is proportional to its level of income. Hence, the same amount of
damages would contribute di¤erently to climate change attitudes in countries with dif-
ferent levels of income, i.e. the higher the income and the lower the impact of the same
amount of damages on environmental awareness. Yet, as for the appreciation of global
warming and for education, damages enter the equation also non interacted with income,
therefore acting as a shift factor too.
6.2 Results for the other proxy variables

As shown in Table 2, the above …ndings are very robust to the various climate change
awareness proxy variables. For instance, the same speci…cation, as for the benchmark
proxy QB1QB2, is selected for QB1, i.e. the percentage of respondents who rank cli-
mate change within the …rst four most important challenges, and QB1b, i.e. the per-
centage of respondents who rank climate change the second to fourth most important
challenge. On the other hand, somewhat more parsimonious is the speci…cation selected
for QB1a, i.e. the percentage of respondents who rank climate change as the most im-
portant challenge. Relative to the benchmark model, the speci…cation for QB1a does not
include quadratic income e¤ects, while monetary damages are measured by their overall
EU amount EU LOSS interacted with GDP , i.e. EU LOSSGDP .
No quadratic income e¤ects can be found also for QB2s, QB2vs and QB2, i.e.
the percentage of respondents who view climate change as a serious problem (QB2s),
a very serious problem (QB2vs) or at least as a serious problem (QB2), respectively.
EU LOSSGDP is also included in all these speci…cations, while T RU ST GDP is omit-
ted. Moreover, the Trump’s dummy DT shows a positive coe¢ cient in the regressions
for QB2vs and QB2: Hence, Trump’s denial campaigns might have not undermined the
perceived gravity of climate change in Europe, but only its ranking relative to other
challenges.
Finally, the QB2s regression shows estimated coe¢ cients with opposite sign relative
to any other regression. This is due to the contraction in the percentage of respondents
who view climate change as only a serious problem (QB2s) over time. Since an overall
increase can be found in the percentage of respondents who view climate change at least as
a serious problem (QB2), the increase in the percentage of respondents who view climate
change as a very serious problem, i.e. QB2vs, has however dominated the contraction in
QB2s.
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6.3 Robustness analysis
The above results are fully robust to saturated regression estimation. As shown in Table 3,
most of the dummies retained by the saturation analysis are impulse dummies, therefore
controlling for potential outliers. After some experimentation we constrained the single
impulse dummies in each model in a joint impulse dummy variable. In three cases we
included step dummies (QB1a, QB1b, QB2s). In only one case the step dummy cover
more than 7 observation (QB2s). Overall, the included deterministic e¤ects selected
by the saturation analysis are fairly parsimonious, i.e. one single additional variable,
apart from two cases, where the are two additional deterministic variables (QB2, QB1b).
Diagnostics and …t are sizably better in the saturated speci…cations. In particular, the
coe¢ cient of determination shows an average increase of about 20% relatively to the non-
saturated models. Given the scope of the analysis, we are not interested in providing an
economic interpretation to the impulse and step dummies included through the saturation
analysis. This is because, in the current context, saturation analysis is only employed as a
robustness assessment tool, i.e. to double check the resilience of the …ndings to potential
misspeci…cations. In this respect, the results are clear-cut, showing neither qualitative
nor signi…cant di¤erences between saturated and non-saturated models.
6.4 Omission tests

In order to double check the validity of the reduction procedure implemented in the paper,
t-ratio tests for the omission of a relevant variable have been carried out. This test is
implemented variable-by-variable, for any of the regressors that were eventually omitted
from the …nal econometric model. The results are reported in Tables 4 and 5, for the
standard and saturated regression case, respectively.
As shown in Table 4, concerning QB1QB2, we fully con…rm the validity of the reduc-
tion analysis, as none of the omitted variables turns out to be statistically signi…cant (at
standard levels) when added to the …nal econometric model, nor yields any improvement
to the …t of the model in terms of AIC and SC criteria. This result also holds for the case
of saturated regression estimation (Table 5). Hence, demographic (Y T H), gender (GGG,
P EG) and political (GRC, GRP ) e¤ects do not account for cross-country di¤erences in
environmental awareness in Europe. The same holds also for other variables that we
include to control for the greenness of the sociocultural environment (V H, CO2, EN E),
environmental quality (EP I, N DG) and the acquisition of non-academic information,
such as internet access (ICT ), media coverage (M C15, M C17, M C19), Atlantic hurri-
canes activity (ACE), fatalities (F AT ), El Niño cycle (SOI ), global mean temperature
(T EM P ), the number of heating degree days (HEAT ). In this respect, the asymmetry
in the experience of climate change in relation to perceived temperature is interesting,
as hotter summers (more intense use of cooling facilities) appear to be more strictly as-
sociated with climate change/global warming than milder winters (less intensive use of
heating facilities).
Similar conclusions can be drawn for the other proxy variables for climate change
attitudes. As shown in Tables 4-5, in few cases, some of the variables that went omitted
in the …nal econometric model appear to be statistically signi…cant at the 5% level when
individually considered. This is the case for SOI , M C17, M C19 in the regression for
QB1a; EU LOSS, Y T H, N DG, EN E in the regression for QB1b; ICT in the regression
for QB2s; Y T H in the regression for QB2vs; GDP 2; SOI , ACE, T EM P , CO2, HEAT
in the regression for QB2. Yet, in none of the cases the resulting augmented model is
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selected by either the AIC or the SC information criteria, for both the non-saturated
and saturated cases.14
7 Conclusions
At current greenhouse gas emissions, the carbon budget for meeting the Paris Agreement
target of 2 C will be depleted in less than three decades, while less than a decade is left
to limit the increase in global temperature to 1.5 C (IPCC, 2018). In the light of these
considerations, understanding the drivers of climate change attitudes is an important
and urgent task, since in democratic systems the legitimacy of political decisions on
climate change mitigation actions relies on the support of public opinion, which can be
expected to be granted only once su¢ cient awareness of the economic, human and social
implications of climate change is achieved.
In this paper we then assess European public attitudes on climate change over the last
decade. Based on aggregate …gures from the Special Eurobarometer surveys on Climate
Change, we …nd that climate change attitudes have evolved according to the “S -shaped”
information dissemination model, recently reproposed by Shiller (2017), conditional to
various socioeconomic and climatological factors.
Speci…cally, we …nd that climate change awareness has increased with the level of
per capita income. We name this relationship “climate change/environmental awareness
curve”. This curve is theoretically motivated by the public good nature of environmental
quality, whose demand increases with the level of income. This curve is also related to
the “environmental Kuznets curve”, which describes an inverse-U shaped relationship
between greenhouse gas emissions and the level of per capita income. Once the threshold
income level is crossed, economic development becomes sustainable, i.e. higher income
levels are associated with lower emissions, and, in our framework, also with higher climate
change awareness.
Signi…cant e¤ects are also found for social trust and greenhouse gas emissions, which
enter the regression equation interacted with per capita income. Hence, these variables
a¤ect the slope of the environmental awareness equation, amplifying and dampening the
e¤ects of income, respectively. Moreover, we …nd a positive linkage between secondary
education and climate change awareness, yet a negative e¤ect for tertiary education.
This latter …nding is surely of interest, raising questions about the relevance of cognitive
bias and self-denial in the face of the uncomfortable implications of climate change. We
also detect signi…cant e¤ects from the experience of climate change, in relation to the
physical distress associated with hot weather and damages in‡icted by extreme weather
episodes. Monetary damages enters the regression equation also interacted with income
and therefore provide a dampening mechanism for the e¤ects of income, by ‡attening
the slope of the environmental awareness equations. Hence, the higher the income of
a country and the lower the impact of the same amount of damages on environmental
awareness.
Finally, consistent with our epidemics narrative of climate change attitudes and the
expected role of opinion leaders, we also …nd a signi…cant impact for Donald Trump’s
denial campaigns and Greta Thunberg’s environmental activism. The positive Greta
14
The results concerning media coverage for QB1a are consistent with the expectation of a signi…cant
contribution of media, in addition to scholarly sources, to the acquisition of information about climate
change. In this respect, media would have contributed to the increase in the percentage of respondents
that view climate change as the most important global challenge occurred in year 2019.
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e¤ect appears to have sizably dominated the negative Trump e¤ect. Hence, climate
change awareness in the EU has deepened as a consequence of the con‡ict of opinions
started with Trump’s Presidential election.
Some policy implications then follow from the above results. Firstly, also in the light
of the epidemics narrative of environmental attitudes formation, the current leadership
de…cit in the …ght against climate change should be urgently overcome. In this respect,
this paper calls on the European Union to take the leadership in the climate change …ght
and make a declaration of climate emergency. The concluding words of the speech given
by Ms. Ursula von der Leyen, the current President of the EU Commission, at COP25
give some hope in this respect: “We Europeans are ready. If we move together, we will
also move faster, in everyone’s interest...We are ready to contribute with our European
Deal to a Global Green Deal.”15
Secondly, scienti…c evidence about climate change has to be disseminated as broadly
as possible to citizens, through academic and non-academic channels. This paper then
calls on teachers, at any education level, to introduce their students to climate change.
In addition to the provision of scienti…c information, which grants the theoretical under-
standing of the phenomenon, action is also required in order to help students to connect
the “experience” of global warming and extreme weather episodes to climate change. It
also calls on leading journals of communication of science-related topics, such as Nature
for instance, to grant the largest possible access to any climate change article they publish
and to grant that their newsletters are di¤used as broadly as possible.
Yet Trump’s politicization of climate change is a very compelling evidence that the
di¤usion of scienti…c evidence might not be enough to raise citizens’awareness, since pub-
lic trust in climate science can be undermined by political action aiming to manufacture
uncertainty about this phenomenon. Hence, our results also point to the importance of
protecting scienti…c evidence about climate change from any instrumental use by political
groups.
Finally, our climate change awareness curve point to a positive linkage between the
demand for environmental quality and income. The supply of environmental quality is
closely related to production techniques and consumption habits, which have to be made
compatible with the required transition to a low-carbon economy. Given the substan-
tial investment in green technologies which is required to reach the targets of the Paris
agreement, monetary and …scal policies should be tightly coordinated, also to make the
transition compatible with maintaining current standards of living. As noted by Morana
and Sbrana (2019), green bonds investment on a global scale yields the double dividend
of funding immediate investment in climate change mitigation, while contributing to …-
nancial stability through redirecting …nancial resources to the real sector. Governments
and international organizations might contribute to de-risk green bonds by supporting
their issuance (Braga et al., 2019). We also argue that greening Q.E. type of policies
might provide the additional support to allow the green bonds market to rapidly growth
to the size required to implement e¤ective climate change mitigation policies. The fact
that Ms. Lagarde, current ECB President, has recently made clear that she believes the
central bank should explore “how we can be e¤ective in participating in the …ght against
climate change”is quite telling in this respect (Arnold, 2019).
15
See https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/speech_19_6651
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Table 1: Cross‐sectional distribution of answers (Eurobarometer Climate Change surveys)
Panel A: Climate change is the most important challenge faced by humanity
QB1a Min Mean Median Max Std. Dev. Skewn Ex‐Kurt
2009 0.090 0.183 0.160 0.360 0.070 0.717 ‐0.287
2011 0.070 0.202 0.190 0.340 0.062 0.366 ‐0.198
2013 0.060 0.159 0.130 0.390 0.081 1.118 0.477
2015 0.050 0.168 0.150 0.370 0.074 0.813 0.281
2017 0.040 0.126 0.105 0.380 0.077 1.695 2.700
2019 0.100 0.216 0.190 0.500 0.101 1.211 1.091
Panel B: Climate change is the second to fourth most important challenge faced by humanity
QB1b Min Mean Median Max Std. Dev. Skewn Ex‐Kurt
2009 0.170 0.331 0.360 0.520 0.089 ‐0.162 ‐0.691
2011 0.150 0.302 0.310 0.460 0.076 ‐0.059 ‐0.510
2013 0.200 0.334 0.335 0.460 0.065 0.165 ‐0.710
2015 0.160 0.311 0.330 0.440 0.075 ‐0.402 ‐0.874
2017 0.170 0.305 0.300 0.440 0.074 0.006 ‐1.172
2019 0.260 0.360 0.365 0.440 0.052 ‐0.349 ‐0.847
Panel C: Climate change is one of the first four most important challenges faced by humanity
QB1 Min Mean Median Max Std. Dev. Skewn Ex‐Kurt
2009 0.280 0.515 0.500 0.750 0.144 ‐0.023 ‐1.217
2011 0.280 0.504 0.510 0.680 0.110 ‐0.236 ‐0.569
2013 0.290 0.493 0.460 0.820 0.129 0.727 ‐0.046
2015 0.240 0.479 0.460 0.760 0.139 0.145 ‐0.720
2017 0.230 0.432 0.425 0.770 0.140 0.748 ‐0.214
2019 0.370 0.576 0.575 0.850 0.127 0.297 ‐0.605
Panel D: Climate change is a serious problem
QB2s Min Mean Median Max Std. Dev. Skewn Ex‐Kurt
2009 0.100 0.226 0.230 0.330 0.052 ‐0.221 0.033
2011 0.080 0.204 0.200 0.320 0.062 ‐0.071 ‐0.478
2013 0.120 0.226 0.230 0.360 0.068 0.186 ‐0.757
2015 0.100 0.231 0.230 0.390 0.066 0.267 0.047
2017 0.090 0.192 0.180 0.300 0.055 0.430 ‐0.609
2019 0.060 0.155 0.150 0.280 0.054 0.260 ‐0.488
Panel E: Climate change is a very serious problem
QB2vs Min Mean Median Max Std. Dev. Skewn Ex‐Kurt
2009 0.420 0.633 0.660 0.840 0.109 ‐0.148 ‐0.769
2011 0.450 0.684 0.690 0.910 0.118 ‐0.104 ‐0.639
2013 0.370 0.660 0.675 0.850 0.115 ‐0.737 0.240
2015 0.340 0.667 0.690 0.870 0.117 ‐1.078 1.390
2017 0.490 0.721 0.730 0.860 0.094 ‐0.707 ‐0.084
2019 0.590 0.772 0.760 0.920 0.082 ‐0.335 ‐0.206
Panel F: Climate change is at least a serious problem
QB2 Min Mean Median Max Std. Dev. Skewn Ex‐Kurt
2009 0.720 0.859 0.880 0.950 0.068 ‐0.572 ‐0.887
2011 0.750 0.889 0.900 0.990 0.062 ‐0.467 ‐0.496
2013 0.720 0.886 0.905 0.970 0.057 ‐1.113 0.743
2015 0.700 0.898 0.910 0.970 0.057 ‐1.893 3.712
2017 0.780 0.913 0.920 0.970 0.045 ‐1.033 0.810
2019 0.840 0.927 0.930 0.980 0.035 ‐0.617 ‐0.193
Panel G: Climate change is one of the first four most important challenges faced by humanity and it is at least a serious problem
Q1BQB2 Min Mean Median Max Std. Dev. Skewn Ex‐Kurt
2009 0.200 0.450 0.430 0.670 0.148 ‐0.061 ‐1.279
2011 0.240 0.451 0.450 0.650 0.109 ‐0.189 ‐0.807
2013 0.210 0.440 0.430 0.750 0.123 0.536 ‐0.039
2015 0.170 0.435 0.420 0.730 0.142 0.072 ‐0.763
2017 0.200 0.397 0.390 0.730 0.138 0.736 ‐0.167
2019 0.340 0.535 0.540 0.820 0.127 0.292 ‐0.496
The Table reports descriptive statistics for the cross‐sectional distributions of the percentage of interviewed that indicated "climate change" as the answer
to question "Which of the following do you consider to be the single most serious problem facing the world as a whole?" (QB1a) and to the question
"Which others do you consider to be serious problems? (QB1b). Similarly for the percentage of interviewed that assigned a score in the range 5‐6 (QB2s)
and 7‐10 (QB2vs), respectively, to the question "And how serious a problem do you think climate change is at this moment? Please use a scale from 1 to
10, with '1' meaning it is "not at all a serious problem" and '10' meaning it is "an extremely serious problem" (QB2). In the table we also report descriptive
statistics for the aggregate of the above percentages, i.e. the percentage of interviewed that indicated "climate change" among the answers provided to
either questions QB1a or QB1b (the sum of QB1a and QB1b), meaning the percentage of respondents that consider climate change one of the first four
most important challenges; the percentage of interviewed that assigned a score in the range 5‐10 to answer Q2, meaning the percentage of interviewed
that consider "climate change" at least a serious problem, and their interaction (QB1QB2), meaning the percentage of interviewed that view climate
change as one of the first four most important challenges and of at least serious gravity. The descriptive statistics are the sample minimum (min) and
maximum (max), the sample mean (Mean), median (Median), standard deviation(Std. Dev.), skewness (Skewn) and excess kurtosis (Ex‐Kurt).
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Table2: Climate change awareness equations
QB1QB2 QB1 QB2 QB1a QB1b QB2s QB2vs
‐1.685 ‐1.374 1.376 ‐2.506 ‐1.810 ‐0.887 0.050
Const (0.251) (0.238) (0.135) (0.206) (0.175) (0.089) (0.115)
3.935 3.320 3.512 1.025 3.277 ‐1.934 3.167
GDP (0.667) (0.659) (0.453) (0.347) (0.475) (0.252) (0.354)
‐1.944 ‐1.851 ‐2.005
GDP2 (0.606) (0.602) ‐ ‐ (0.452) ‐ ‐
‐0.228 ‐0.309 0.318 ‐0.488 ‐0.079 ‐0.220 0.316
DT (0.072) (0.069) (0.092) (0.081) (0.052) (0.064) (0.075)
0.343 0.282 0.461 0.143 0.169 ‐0.486 0.574
GT (0.070) (0.067) (0.101) (0.073) (0.050) (0.074) (0.083)
‐2.200 ‐1.930 ‐2.797 ‐2.151 ‐0.732 1.423 ‐2.398
GHGGDP (0.601) (0.590) (0.484) (0.391) (0.378) (0.272) (0.365)
3.057 3.437 3.511 0.983
TRUSTGDP (0.473) (0.468) ‐ (0.429) (0.352) ‐ ‐
‐0.730 ‐0.670 ‐0.562 ‐0.413 ‐0.428 0.526 ‐0.682
TER (0.162) (0.161) (0.191) (0.140) (0.121) (0.123) (0.162)
0.696 0.705 0.561 0.460
SEC (0.236) (0.225) ‐ (0.240) (0.170) ‐ ‐
0.746 0.595 1.238 0.514 0.311 ‐0.767 1.078
COOL (0.188) (0.183) (0.171) (0.202) (0.143) (0.151) (0.161)
1.024 0.841 1.143 0.908 ‐0.781 1.132
LOSS (0.220) (0.216) (0.236) ‐ (0.158) (0.160) (0.198)
‐2.521 ‐1.842 ‐3.402 ‐2.216 2.105 ‐3.247
LOSSGDP (0.863) (0.825) (0.894) ‐ (0.601) (0.550) (0.721)
0.286 0.282 ‐0.164 0.239
EULOSSGDP ‐ ‐ (0.140) (0.094) ‐ (0.070) (0.100)

R2 0.665 0.693 0.493 0.630 0.535 0.546 0.585
Adj.R2 0.641 0.671 0.464 0.609 0.501 0.520 0.561
AIC ‐1.995 ‐2.067 ‐1.427 ‐1.944 ‐2.643 ‐2.351 ‐1.872
SC ‐1.770 ‐1.842 ‐1.240 ‐1.756 ‐2.418 ‐2.163 ‐1.685
T 166 166 166 166 166 166 166
Normality [0.2489] [0.0768] [0.0370] [0.6851] [0.2295] [0.5842] [0.9767]
Hetero [0.0803] [0.0335] [0.0580] [0.0169] [0.0759] [0.0034] [0.1955]
Hetero‐X [0.0010] [0.0035] [0.0000] [0.0004] [0.0557] [0.1093] [0.0570]
RESET23 [0.8389] [0.7114] [0.2480] [0.1178] [0.0004] [0.9026] [0.0935]
The Table reports the estimated final econometric models for the various proxy variables for climate change awareness. i.e. QB1a, QB1b,
QB2s, QB2vs, QB1, QB2, QB1QB2. Estimation is performed by OLS and heteroskedastic consistent standard errors (HCSE) are reported in
round brackets. The regressors are per capita GDP (GDP) and its squared value (GDP2), the Donald Trump (DT) and Greta Thunberg (GT)
dummies, per capita greenhouse gas emissions (GHGGDP) and overall trust (TRUSTGDP) interacted with per capita GDP, secondary (SEC)
and tertiary (TER) education, cooling degree days (COOL), cumulated monetary damages (LOSS) also interacted with per capita GDP
(LOSSGDP), aggregate EU28 monetary damages interacted with GDP (EULOSSGDP). The reported statistics are the unadjusted (R2) and
adjusted (Adj. R2) coefficient of determination, the Akaike (AIC) and Schwarz‐Bayes (SC) information criteria, the sample size (T). Moreover,
p‐values for the Bera‐Jarque Normality test (Normality), the White heteroskedasticity tests (Hetero, Hetero‐X) and the Ramset RESET test
(RESET23) are reported in square brackets.
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Table3: Climate change awareness equations, saturated regressions
‐1.642 ‐1.328 1.339 ‐2.300 ‐2.170 ‐0.676 0.061
Const (0.238) (0.228) (0.434) (0.185) (0.151) (0.100) (0.113)
3.543 2.905 3.730 0.847 3.610 ‐1.984 3.283
GDP (0.238) (0.636) (0.218) (0.342) (0.455) (0.245) (0.344)
‐1.525 ‐1.407 ‐2.286
GDP2 (0.238) (0.574) ‐ ‐ (0.432) ‐
‐0.216 ‐0.297 0.309 ‐0.475 ‐0.122 ‐0.261 0.311
DT (0.238) (0.069) (0.091) (0.079) (0.050) (0.057) (0.076)
0.352 0.292 0.462 0.152 0.108 ‐0.542 0.571
GT (0.238) (0.067) (0.100) (0.073) (0.046) (0.068) (0.084)
‐2.555 ‐2.306 ‐2.941 ‐2.073 ‐0.540 1.403 ‐2.456
GHGGDP (0.238) (0.576) (0.477) (0.384) (0.359) (0.262) (0.363)
3.398 3.798 3.570 0.711
TRUSTGDP (0.238) (0.438) ‐ (0.413) (0.329) ‐ ‐
‐0.641 ‐0.575 ‐0.575 ‐0.394 ‐0.365 0.816 ‐0.782
TER (0.238) (0.151) (0.163) (0.140) (0.105) (0.116) (0.151)
0.646 0.652 0.371 0.825
SEC (0.238) (0.213) ‐ (0.211) (0.132) ‐ ‐
0.762 0.611 1.283 0.389 0.778 ‐0.519 1.078
COOL (0.238) (0.173) (0.157) (0.192) (0.123) (0.150) (0.159)
0.992 0.807 1.286 0.929 ‐0.999 1.206
LOSS (0.238) (0.209) (0.218) ‐ (0.145) (0.152) (0.194)
‐2.710 ‐2.042 ‐3.767 ‐2.223 1.636 ‐3.337
LOSSGDP (0.238) (0.798) (0.883) ‐ (0.562) (0.492) (0.732)
0.203 0.281 ‐0.161 0.259
EULOSSGDP ‐ ‐ (0.095) (0.091) (0.067) (0.093)
IMPULSE 0.902 0.955 ‐1.53 ‐1.16 ‐0.659 ‐0.982
(0.077) (0.073) (0.138) (0.078) ‐ (0.051) ‐ (0.080)
STEP ‐ ‐ 0.297 0.785 ‐0.351
‐ (0.108) (0.129) (0.068) ‐

R2 0.703 0.735 0.634 0.651 0.651 0.616 0.617
Adj.R2 0.679 0.714 0.608 0.628 0.621 0.592 0.593
AIC ‐2.102 ‐2.202 ‐1.728 ‐1.989 ‐2.905 ‐2.507 ‐1.942
SC ‐1.859 ‐1.958 ‐1.503 ‐1.783 ‐2.643 ‐2.301 ‐1.736
T 166 166 166 166 166 166 166
Normality [0.3494] [0.1175] [0.2980] [0.3200] [0.0317] [0.3841] [0.7963]
Hetero [0.4107] [0.1877] [0.7150] [0.2621] [0.5340] [0.2371] [0.1657]
Hetero‐X [0.1819] [0.2623] [0.0932] [0.1257] [0.1622] [0.4469] [0.2353]
RESET23 [0.5859] [0.4884] [0.2871] [0.2022] [0.0285] [0.0582] [0.1915]
The Table reports the estimated final econometric models for the various proxy variables for climate change awareness. i.e. QB1a, QB1b,
QB2s, QB2vs, QB1, QB2, QB1QB2. Estimation is performed by OLS and heteroskedastic consistent standard errors (HCSE) are reported in
round brackets. The regressors are per capita GDP (GDP) and its squared value (GDP2), the Donald Trump (DT) and Greta Thunberg (GT)
dummies, per capita greenhouse gas emissions (GHGGDP) and overall trust (TRUSTGDP) interacted with per capita GDP, secondary (SEC)
and tertiary (TER) education, cooling degree days (COOL), cumulated monetary damages (LOSS) also interacted with per capita GDP
(LOSSGDP), aggregate EU28 monetary damages interacted with GDP (EULOSSGDP). The definition of the impulse (IMPULSE) and step (STEP)
dummy variables is as follows. For QB1QB2 and QB1: I_7_49_145, i.e. an impulse dummy taking unitary value in correspondence of entries
7, 49 and 145 and zero elsewhere; for QB2: I_51_m_50, i.e. an impulse dummy taking a unitary value in correspondence of entry 51 and
a negative unitary value in correspondence of entry 50, I_128_127_m_153_152, i.e. an impulse dummy taking unitary values in
correspondence of entries 127, 128 and negative unitary values in correspondence of entries 152 and 153; QB1a: S_114_131, i.e. a step
dummy variable taking negative unitary values in the interval 115‐131; QB1b: I_26_121_124, i.e. an impulse dummy taking unitary values
in correspondence of entries 26, 121 and 124, S_19_24, i.e. a step dummy variable taking negative unitary values in the interval 20‐24;
QB2s: S_1_114, i.e. a step dummy variable taking unitary values in the interval 1‐114; QB2vs: I_128_127, i.e. an impulse dummy taking
unitary value in correspondence of entries 127 and 128. The reported statistics are the unadjusted (R2) and adjusted (Adj. R2) coefficient
of determination, the Akaike (AIC) and Schwarz‐Bayes (SC) information criteria, the sample size (T). Moreover, p‐values for the Bera‐
Jarque Normality test (Normality), the White heteroskedasticity tests (Hetero, Hetero‐X) and the Ramset RESET test (RESET23) are
reported in square brackets.

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Table 4: Climate change awareness equation, omission analysis
EULOSS 0.643 0.235 ‐ ‐ ‐2.033 ‐ ‐
AIC ‐1.986 ‐2.055 ‐ ‐ ‐2.663 ‐ ‐
SC ‐1.742 ‐1.811 ‐ ‐ ‐2.419 ‐ ‐
GDP2 ‐ ‐ ‐2.325 ‐1.338 ‐ 0.743 ‐1.712

AIC ‐ ‐ ‐1.435 ‐1.941 ‐ ‐2.341 ‐1.872
SC ‐ ‐ ‐1.229 ‐1.735 ‐ ‐2.135 ‐1.666
TRUSTGDP ‐ ‐ 0.627 ‐ ‐ ‐0.698 1.019

AIC ‐ ‐ ‐1.417 ‐ ‐ ‐2.341 ‐1.865
SC ‐ ‐ ‐1.211 ‐ ‐ ‐2.135 ‐1.659
SEC ‐ ‐ 0.225 ‐ ‐ ‐0.528 0.656

AIC ‐ ‐ ‐1.416 ‐ ‐ ‐2.341 ‐1.864
SC ‐ ‐ ‐1.209 ‐ ‐ ‐2.134 ‐1.657
LOSS ‐ ‐ ‐ 0.763 ‐ ‐ ‐
AIC ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐1.936 ‐ ‐ ‐
SC ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐1.730 ‐ ‐ ‐
LOSSGDP ‐ ‐ ‐ 0.888 ‐ ‐ ‐
AIC ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐1.938 ‐ ‐ ‐
SC ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐1.732 ‐ ‐ ‐
FAT ‐1.091 ‐1.417 ‐0.106 ‐0.880 ‐0.186 ‐0.564 ‐0.100

AIC ‐1.988 ‐2.064 ‐1.415 ‐1.935 ‐2.631 ‐2.341 ‐1.860
SC ‐1.745 ‐1.820 ‐1.209 ‐1.728 ‐2.387 ‐2.134 ‐1.654
IA ‐1.151 ‐1.505 0.545 ‐1.332 ‐0.575 2.742 ‐0.944

AIC ‐1.993 ‐2.074 ‐1.717 ‐1.944 ‐2.635 ‐2.390 ‐1.867
SC ‐1.750 ‐1.831 ‐1.474 ‐1.738 ‐2.391 ‐2.183 ‐1.660
YTH ‐0.554 ‐0.123 ‐1.597 0.849 ‐2.084 1.878 ‐2.090

AIC ‐1.984 ‐2.055 ‐1.438 ‐1.954 ‐2.660 ‐2.363 ‐1.967
SC ‐1.741 ‐1.811 ‐1.232 ‐1.748 ‐2.416 ‐2.157 ‐1.741

ET 0.345 0.736 ‐0.099 0.325 1.011 0.560 ‐0.484
AIC ‐1.983 ‐2.058 ‐1.415 ‐1.932 ‐2.635 ‐2.341 ‐1.862
SC ‐1.739 ‐1.814 ‐1.209 ‐1.726 ‐2.392 ‐2.135 ‐1.655

ACE 0.799 1.511 ‐2.726 1.939 ‐0.000 ‐0.414 ‐1.075
AIC ‐1.987 ‐2.069 ‐1.446 ‐1.959 ‐2.630 ‐2.340 ‐1.867
SC ‐1.743 ‐1.826 ‐1.240 ‐1.752 ‐2.387 ‐2.133 ‐1.660

SOI_ 0.986 1.847 ‐3.094 2.573 ‐0.001 ‐0.394 ‐1.324
AIC ‐1.989 ‐2.077 ‐1.457 ‐1.979 ‐2.631 ‐2.339 ‐1.870
SC ‐1.745 ‐1.833 ‐1.251 ‐1.772 ‐2.387 ‐2.133 ‐1.664
TEMP ‐0.592 ‐1.043 2.038 ‐1.189 0.185 0.401 0.748

AIC ‐1.985 ‐2.062 ‐1.434 ‐1.942 ‐2.631 ‐2.339 ‐1.863
SC ‐1.741 ‐1.819 ‐1.227 ‐1.736 ‐2.387 ‐2.133 ‐1.657
VH 0.401 0.312 ‐0.249 ‐1.594 1.805 ‐0.738 0.586

AIC ‐1.983 ‐2.055 ‐1.416 ‐1.943 ‐2.649 ‐2.342 ‐1.863
SC ‐1.740 ‐1.811 ‐1.209 ‐1.737 ‐2.405 ‐2.136 ‐1.656

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Table 4 (ctd): Climate change awareness equation, omission analysis
NDG ‐1.229 ‐0.959 ‐0.351 0.384 ‐2.048 ‐0.553 0.371
AIC ‐1.992 ‐2.061 ‐1.416 ‐1.932 ‐2.658 ‐2.340 ‐1.861
SC ‐1.748 ‐1.817 ‐1.210 ‐1.726 ‐2.414 ‐2.134 ‐1.654
CO2 0.749 1.624 ‐2.849 1.985 0.433 ‐1.668 ‐0.495

AIC ‐1.986 ‐2.073 ‐1.455 ‐1.961 ‐2.632 ‐2.354 ‐1.861
SC ‐1.742 ‐1.829 ‐1.249 ‐1.755 ‐2.388 ‐2.148 ‐1.655
ENE ‐3.035 ‐3.085 0.626 ‐1.319 ‐3.352 ‐0.104 0.257

AIC ‐2.033 ‐2.108 ‐1.417 ‐1.941 ‐2.684 ‐2.338 ‐1.860
SC ‐1.789 ‐1.864 ‐1.211 ‐1.735 ‐2.440 ‐2.132 ‐1.654
MC15 ‐1.116 ‐1.994 0.358 ‐2.946 ‐0.846 0.190 0.120

AIC ‐1.987 ‐2.062 ‐1.416 ‐1.942 ‐2.631 ‐2.339 ‐1.860
SC ‐1.743 ‐1.818 ‐1.210 ‐1.736 ‐2.387 ‐2.132 ‐1.654
MC17 ‐0.724 ‐0.718 ‐0.460 0.734 ‐0.879 ‐1.047 0.537

AIC ‐1.983 ‐2.056 ‐1.416 ‐1.933 ‐2.631 ‐2.349 ‐1.862
SC ‐1.740 ‐1.812 ‐1.210 ‐1.723 ‐2.388 ‐2.142 ‐1.656
MC19 0.965 1.035 ‐0.620 3.153 0.162 ‐1.242 0.987

AIC ‐1.984 ‐2.056 ‐1.416 ‐1.939 ‐2.630 ‐2.350 ‐1.863
SC ‐1.740 ‐1.813 ‐1.209 ‐1.733 ‐2.387 ‐2.144 ‐1.657
HEAT ‐0.187 0.365 ‐1.995 0.034 ‐0.890 ‐0.724 ‐0.562

AIC ‐1.983 ‐2.056 ‐1.435 ‐1.932 ‐2.635 ‐2.341 ‐1.862
SC ‐1.739 ‐1.812 ‐1.229 ‐1.726 ‐2.391 ‐2.135 ‐1.655
EPI 0.045 0.463 ‐0.883 0.316 ‐0.727 ‐1.036 ‐0.050

AIC ‐1.982 ‐2.056 ‐1.420 ‐1.944 ‐2.633 ‐2.345 ‐1.860
SC ‐1.739 ‐1.812 ‐1.214 ‐1.738 ‐2.390 ‐2.138 ‐1.654
GRC ‐0.319 ‐0.114 ‐1.121 ‐0.627 ‐0.117 ‐0.057 ‐0.435

AIC ‐1.983 ‐2.055 ‐1.423 ‐1.935 ‐2.631 ‐2.339 ‐1.861
SC ‐1.740 ‐1.811 ‐1.217 ‐1.728 ‐2.387 ‐2.132 ‐1.655
GRP ‐1.104 ‐0.962 ‐0.908 ‐1.428 ‐1.041 ‐0.136 ‐0.306

AIC ‐1.991 ‐2.061 ‐1.420 ‐1.946 ‐2.637 ‐2.339 ‐1.861
SC ‐1.747 ‐1.818 ‐1.214 ‐1.740 ‐2.393 ‐2.132 ‐1.654
GGG 0.940 1.061 0.152 1.491 0.155 ‐0.357 0.571

AIC ‐1.988 ‐2.061 ‐1.415 ‐1.943 ‐2.631 ‐2.339 ‐1.862
SC ‐1.744 ‐1.818 ‐1.209 ‐1.737 ‐2.387 ‐2.133 ‐1.656
PEG 0.654 0.588 0.517 1.462 ‐0.069 ‐1.170 1.296

AIC ‐1.985 ‐2.057 ‐1.417 ‐1.942 2.631 ‐2.345 ‐1.869
SC ‐1.741 ‐1.813 ‐1.210 ‐1.736 ‐2.387 ‐2.139 ‐1.662
The Table reports variable‐by‐variable omission t‐ratio tests, computed using HCSE standard errors, and the Akaike (AIC) and Schwarz‐
Bayes (SC) information criteria. The tested variables are: aggregate EU28 monetary damages interacted with GDP (EULOSSGDP), squared
per capita GDP (GDP2), interacted per capita greenhouse gas emissions (GHGGDP) and overall trust (TRUSTGDP) with per capita GDP,
secondary education (SEC), heating degree days (HEAT), cumulated monetary damages (LOSS) also interacted with per capita GDP
(LOSSGDP), the level of internet access (IA), the number of fatalities caused by extreme weather and climate related events (FAT), the
Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index (ACE), the negative component of the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI₋), the Notre‐Dame Gain Index
(NDG), total environmental taxes to GDP ratio (ET), the ratio of young people in the total population (YTH), the index of vegetarian/health
attitudes (VH), the index of passengers cars efficiency (CO2), the index of energy productivity (ENE), the Environmental Performance Index
(EPI), two political indexes measuring Government political composition, in relation to preferences for right‐wing parties (GRC and GRP),
the Global Gender Gap Index (GGG) and its Political Empowerment Subindex (PEG), a volume index for climate change media coverage
for years 2015. 2017, 2019 (MC15, MC17, MC19), the European temperature anomaly (TEMP).
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Table 5: Climate change awareness equation, saturated regressions, omission analysis
EULOSS 1.207 0.845 ‐ ‐ ‐1.822 ‐ ‐
AIC ‐2.103 ‐2.195 ‐ ‐ ‐2.918 ‐ ‐
SC ‐1.840 ‐1.932 ‐ ‐ ‐2.637 ‐ ‐
GDP2 ‐ ‐ ‐2.826 ‐1.381 ‐ ‐0.082 ‐1.901

AIC ‐ ‐ ‐1.752 ‐1.987 ‐ ‐2.495 ‐1.946
SC ‐ ‐ ‐1.509 ‐1.762 ‐ ‐2.270 ‐1.721
TRUSTGDP ‐ ‐ 0.843 ‐ ‐ ‐1.143 0.831

AIC ‐ ‐ ‐1.720 ‐ ‐ ‐2.502 ‐1.934
SC ‐ ‐ ‐1.476 ‐ ‐ ‐2.277 ‐1.709
SEC ‐ ‐ ‐2.312 ‐ ‐ ‐1.451 ‐0.830

AIC ‐ ‐ ‐1.741 ‐ ‐ ‐2.510 ‐1.933
SC ‐ ‐ ‐1.497 ‐ ‐ ‐2.285 ‐1.708
LOSS ‐ ‐ ‐ 1.316 ‐ ‐ ‐
AIC ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐1.991 ‐ ‐ ‐
SC ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐1.766 ‐ ‐ ‐
LOSSGDP ‐ ‐ ‐ 1.682 ‐ ‐ ‐
AIC ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐1.998 ‐ ‐ ‐
SC ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐1.773 ‐ ‐ ‐
FAT ‐1.002 ‐1.008 ‐0.555 ‐1.482 ‐1.008 2.143 0.660

AIC 0.742 ‐2.898 ‐1.718 ‐1.986 ‐2.898 ‐2.519 ‐1.933
SC 1.004 ‐2.617 ‐1.475 ‐1.760 ‐2.617 ‐2.294 ‐1.708
IA ‐0.195 ‐0.538 ‐1.597 ‐0.864 ‐0.930 1.507 ‐1.401

AIC ‐2.091 ‐2.192 ‐1.438 ‐1.982 ‐2.905 ‐2.510 ‐1.944
SC ‐1.828 ‐1.929 ‐1.232 ‐1.758 ‐2.624 ‐2.285 ‐1.719
YTH ‐0.858 ‐0.459 ‐3.343 2.387 ‐0.540 ‐0.049 ‐0.484

AIC ‐2.095 ‐2.191 ‐1.797 ‐2.020 ‐2.895 ‐2.495 ‐1.862
SC ‐1.833 ‐1.928 ‐1.553 ‐1.795 ‐2.614 ‐2.270 ‐1.655
ET 0.712 1.163 0.713 0.692 0.975 0.435 ‐0.599

AIC ‐2.093 ‐2.198 ‐1.719 ‐1.981 ‐2.898 ‐2.496 ‐1.932
SC ‐1.831 ‐1.935 ‐1.475 ‐1.756 ‐2.617 ‐2.271 ‐1.708
ACE 0.654 1.354 ‐2.953 1.949 0.049 0.193 ‐0.871

AIC ‐2.094 ‐2.203 ‐1.759 ‐2.004 ‐2.893 ‐2.495 ‐1.935
SC ‐1.831 ‐1.941 ‐1.516 ‐1.779 ‐2.612 ‐2.270 ‐1.710
SOI_ 0.569 1.413 ‐3.160 2.565 0.286 0.449 ‐1.060

AIC ‐2.093 ‐2.204 ‐1.769 ‐2.022 ‐2.894 ‐2.496 ‐1.937
SC ‐1.830 ‐1.941 ‐1.525 ‐1.797 ‐2.613 ‐2.271 ‐1.711
TEMP 0.764 ‐1.237 2.429 ‐1.212 0.361 0.056 0.626

AIC ‐2.095 ‐2.202 ‐1.744 ‐1.987 ‐2.894 ‐2.495 ‐1.932
SC ‐1.832 ‐1.939 ‐1.501 ‐1.762 ‐2.613 ‐2.270 ‐1.707
VH 0.729 0.687 ‐0.764 ‐1.706 1.659 ‐1.839 0.098

AIC ‐2.093 ‐2.192 ‐1.724 ‐1.991 ‐2.911 ‐2.519 ‐1.930
SC ‐1.830 ‐1.929 ‐1.480 ‐1.766 ‐2.629 ‐2.294 ‐1.705

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Table 5 (ctd): Climate change awareness equation, saturated regressions, omission analysis
NDG 0.690 ‐0.341 0.117 0.732 ‐1.820 ‐0.381 ‐1.446
AIC ‐2.093 ‐2.190 ‐1.716 ‐1.979 ‐2.920 ‐2.496 ‐1.867
SC ‐1.830 ‐1.928 ‐1.472 ‐1.755 ‐2.638 ‐2.271 ‐1.661
CO2 ‐0.169 0.902 ‐3.962 1.758 0.712 ‐1.051 ‐0.632

AIC ‐2.090 ‐2.194 ‐1.805 ‐1.999 ‐2.896 ‐2.501 ‐1.932
SC ‐1.828 ‐1.932 ‐1.561 ‐1.744 ‐2.616 ‐2.276 ‐1.707
ENE ‐2.808 ‐2.877 0.687 ‐1.711 ‐2.581 ‐0.248 0.650

AIC ‐2.129 ‐2.230 ‐1.722 ‐1.992 ‐2.938 ‐2.495 ‐1.932
SC ‐1.886 ‐1.967 ‐1.478 ‐1.767 ‐2.657 ‐2.270 ‐1.707
MC15 ‐0.784 ‐1.552 0.341 ‐3.306 ‐0.820 0.579 0.047

AIC ‐2.093 ‐2.194 ‐1.717 ‐1.991 ‐2.895 ‐2.496 ‐1.930
SC ‐1.830 ‐1.932 ‐1.473 ‐1.766 ‐2.613 ‐2.271 ‐1.705
MC17 ‐0.436 ‐0.386 ‐0.549 0.501 ‐0.431 ‐1.147 0.524

AIC ‐2.091 ‐2.190 ‐1.717 ‐1.978 ‐2.897 ‐2.501 ‐1.932
SC ‐1.838 ‐1.927 ‐1.473 ‐1.753 ‐2.616 ‐2.276 ‐1.707
MC19 1.224 1.325 ‐0.701 2.898 ‐0.010 ‐1.507 0.977

AIC ‐2.094 ‐2.193 ‐1.716 ‐1.983 ‐2.893 ‐2.504 ‐1.933
SC ‐1.831 ‐1.930 ‐1.473 ‐1.758 ‐2.612 ‐2.279 ‐1.708
HEAT ‐0.317 ‐0.302 ‐2.527 ‐0.439 ‐1.492 ‐1.052 ‐1.043

AIC ‐2.091 ‐2.190 ‐1.751 ‐1.978 ‐2.903 ‐2.500 ‐1.936
SC ‐1.829 ‐1.927 ‐1.507 ‐1.753 ‐2.622 ‐2.275 ‐1.711
EPI ‐0.655 ‐0.153 ‐0.523 1.076 ‐0.467 ‐0.252 0.369

AIC ‐2.093 ‐2.062 ‐1.717 ‐1.985 ‐2.894 ‐2.495 ‐1.931
SC ‐1.830 ‐1.818 ‐1.473 ‐1.760 ‐2.613 ‐2.270 ‐1.706
GRC ‐0.757 ‐0.569 ‐0.821 ‐0.502 0.540 ‐0.184 ‐0.731

AIC ‐2.094 ‐2.191 ‐1.720 ‐1.979 ‐2.895 ‐2.495 ‐1.934
SC ‐1.831 ‐1.929 ‐1.477 ‐1.754 ‐2.614 ‐2.270 ‐1.709
GRP ‐1.464 ‐1.352 ‐0.674 ‐0.935 0.161 ‐0.750 ‐0.684

AIC ‐2.103 ‐2.200 ‐1.719 ‐1.983 ‐2.894 ‐2.498 ‐1.933
SC ‐1.841 ‐1.938 ‐1.475 ‐1.758 ‐2.612 ‐2.273 ‐1.708
GGG 1.422 1.636 0.823 1.332 ‐0.177 ‐0.448 0.989

AIC ‐2.104 ‐2.206 ‐1.720 ‐1.986 ‐2.894 ‐2.496 ‐1.935
SC ‐1.841 ‐1.943 ‐1.476 ‐1.761 ‐2.612 ‐2.271 ‐1.710
PEG 1.283 1.309 1.001 1.347 ‐0.420 ‐0.809 1.650

AIC ‐2.101 ‐2.200 ‐1.721 ‐1.987 ‐2.894 ‐2.498 ‐1.944
SC ‐1.838 ‐1.937 ‐1.478 ‐1.762 ‐2.613 ‐2.273 ‐1.719
The Table reports variable‐by‐variable omission t‐ratio tests, computed using HCSE standard errors, and the Akaike (AIC) and Schwarz‐
Bayes (SC) information criteria. The tested variables are: aggregate EU28 monetary damages interacted with GDP (EULOSSGDP), squared
per capita GDP (GDP2), interacted per capita greenhouse gas emissions (GHGGDP) and overall trust (TRUSTGDP) with per capita GDP,
secondary education (SEC), heating degree days (HEAT), cumulated monetary damages (LOSS) also interacted with per capita GDP
(LOSSGDP), the level of internet access (IA), the number of fatalities caused by extreme weather and climate related events (FAT), the
Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index (ACE), the negative component of the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI₋), the Notre‐Dame Gain Index
(NDG), total environmental taxes to GDP ratio (ET), the ratio of young people in the total population (YTH), the index of vegetarian/health
attitudes (VH), the index of passengers cars efficiency (CO2), the index of energy productivity (ENE), the Environmental Performance Index
(EPI), two political indexes measuring Government political composition, in relation to preferences for right‐wing parties (GRC and GRP),
the Global Gender Gap Index (GGG) and its Political Empowerment Subindex (PEG), a volume index for climate change media coverage
for years 2015. 2017, 2019 (MC15, MC17, MC19), the European temperature anomaly (TEMP).
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QB1a: "CC is the most important challenge" QB2s: "CC is a fairly serious problem"
6 7.5
2009 2019 2009 2019
4 5.0
2 2.5
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4
QB1b: "CC is the second to fourth most important challenge" QB2vs: "CC is a very serious problem"
7.5
2009 2019 2009 2019
4
5.0
2
2.5
0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0
QB1: "CC is one of the first four most important challenges" QB2: "CC is a fairly to very serious problem"
3 10
2009 2019 2009 2019
2
5
1
0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0
QB1xQB2: "CC is one of the first four most important challenges and of fairly to very serious gravity"
3
2009 2019
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0
The Figure reports kernel density estimates for the cross-sectional distribution of the answers provided to questions QB1a, QB1b and
QB2, i.e. the percentage of interviewed that indicated "climate change" as the answer to question "Which of the following do you
consider to be the single most serious problem facing the world as a whole?" (QB1a) and to question "Which others do you consider
to be serious problems? (QB1b). Similarly for the percentage of interviewed that assigned a score in the range 5-6 (QB2s) and 7-10
(QB2vs), respectively, to the question "And how serious a problem do you think climate change is at this moment? Please use a scale
from 1 to 10, with '1' meaning it is "not at all a serious problem" and '10' meaning it is "an extremely serious problem" (QB2). In the
Figure we also report kernel density estimates for the aggregates of the above percentages, i.e. the percentage of interviewed that
indicated "climate change" among the answers provided to either questions QB1a or QB1b (the sum of QB1a and QB1b), meaning
the percentage of respondents that consider climate change one of the first four most important challenges, the percentage of
interviewed that assigned a score in the range 5-10 to answer Q2, meaning the percentage of interviewed that consider "climate
change" at least a serious problem, and their interaction (QB1QB2), meaning the percentage of interviewed that view climate change
as one of the first four most important challenges and at least of serious gravity.
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CefES-DEMS Paper Series

Donatella Baiardi, Claudio Morana Climate change awareness:

3 Stylized facts about climate change awareness in

3.1 The empirical evidence

4 A narrative epidemics of climate change awareness

4.1 The econometric speci…cation

yi;t = x0i;t 1 +"i;t ; (4)

5.1 The underlying socioeconomic environment

An index of vegetarian/health attitudes (V H), measured by the percentage of people

The dissemination process might also be expected to proceed at a quicker pace in

An interesting mechanism also works through the responsibility recognition of the

In terms of parameters in (1), we then expect a positive linkage between climate

5.2 Knowledge about climate change

5.2.1 Theoretical knowledge about climate change

The level of education, measured by the percentages of total population (aged

In terms of parameters in (1), we then expect a positive linkage between climate

5.2.2 Practical knowledge about climate change

In terms of parameters in (1), we then expect a positive linkage between COOL

6.2 Results for the other proxy variables

6.4 Omission tests

GDP2 ‐ ‐ ‐2.325 ‐1.338 ‐ 0.743 ‐1.712

TRUSTGDP ‐ ‐ 0.627 ‐ ‐ ‐0.698 1.019

SEC ‐ ‐ 0.225 ‐ ‐ ‐0.528 0.656

FAT ‐1.091 ‐1.417 ‐0.106 ‐0.880 ‐0.186 ‐0.564 ‐0.100

IA ‐1.151 ‐1.505 0.545 ‐1.332 ‐0.575 2.742 ‐0.944

YTH ‐0.554 ‐0.123 ‐1.597 0.849 ‐2.084 1.878 ‐2.090

TEMP ‐0.592 ‐1.043 2.038 ‐1.189 0.185 0.401 0.748

VH 0.401 0.312 ‐0.249 ‐1.594 1.805 ‐0.738 0.586

CO2 0.749 1.624 ‐2.849 1.985 0.433 ‐1.668 ‐0.495

ENE ‐3.035 ‐3.085 0.626 ‐1.319 ‐3.352 ‐0.104 0.257

MC15 ‐1.116 ‐1.994 0.358 ‐2.946 ‐0.846 0.190 0.120

MC17 ‐0.724 ‐0.718 ‐0.460 0.734 ‐0.879 ‐1.047 0.537

MC19 0.965 1.035 ‐0.620 3.153 0.162 ‐1.242 0.987

HEAT ‐0.187 0.365 ‐1.995 0.034 ‐0.890 ‐0.724 ‐0.562

EPI 0.045 0.463 ‐0.883 0.316 ‐0.727 ‐1.036 ‐0.050

GRC ‐0.319 ‐0.114 ‐1.121 ‐0.627 ‐0.117 ‐0.057 ‐0.435

GRP ‐1.104 ‐0.962 ‐0.908 ‐1.428 ‐1.041 ‐0.136 ‐0.306

GGG 0.940 1.061 0.152 1.491 0.155 ‐0.357 0.571

PEG 0.654 0.588 0.517 1.462 ‐0.069 ‐1.170 1.296

GDP2 ‐ ‐ ‐2.826 ‐1.381 ‐ ‐0.082 ‐1.901

TRUSTGDP ‐ ‐ 0.843 ‐ ‐ ‐1.143 0.831

SEC ‐ ‐ ‐2.312 ‐ ‐ ‐1.451 ‐0.830

FAT ‐1.002 ‐1.008 ‐0.555 ‐1.482 ‐1.008 2.143 0.660

IA ‐0.195 ‐0.538 ‐1.597 ‐0.864 ‐0.930 1.507 ‐1.401

YTH ‐0.858 ‐0.459 ‐3.343 2.387 ‐0.540 ‐0.049 ‐0.484

ET 0.712 1.163 0.713 0.692 0.975 0.435 ‐0.599

ACE 0.654 1.354 ‐2.953 1.949 0.049 0.193 ‐0.871

SOI_ 0.569 1.413 ‐3.160 2.565 0.286 0.449 ‐1.060

TEMP 0.764 ‐1.237 2.429 ‐1.212 0.361 0.056 0.626

VH 0.729 0.687 ‐0.764 ‐1.706 1.659 ‐1.839 0.098

CO2 ‐0.169 0.902 ‐3.962 1.758 0.712 ‐1.051 ‐0.632

ENE ‐2.808 ‐2.877 0.687 ‐1.711 ‐2.581 ‐0.248 0.650

MC15 ‐0.784 ‐1.552 0.341 ‐3.306 ‐0.820 0.579 0.047

MC17 ‐0.436 ‐0.386 ‐0.549 0.501 ‐0.431 ‐1.147 0.524

MC19 1.224 1.325 ‐0.701 2.898 ‐0.010 ‐1.507 0.977

HEAT ‐0.317 ‐0.302 ‐2.527 ‐0.439 ‐1.492 ‐1.052 ‐1.043

EPI ‐0.655 ‐0.153 ‐0.523 1.076 ‐0.467 ‐0.252 0.369

GRC ‐0.757 ‐0.569 ‐0.821 ‐0.502 0.540 ‐0.184 ‐0.731

GRP ‐1.464 ‐1.352 ‐0.674 ‐0.935 0.161 ‐0.750 ‐0.684

GGG 1.422 1.636 0.823 1.332 ‐0.177 ‐0.448 0.989

PEG 1.283 1.309 1.001 1.347 ‐0.420 ‐0.809 1.650

0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0

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