Rising Seas, Rising Concerns: How Climate Change Vulnerability Shapes Opinions Towards Policy
Living in areas vulnerable to rising sea levels is associated with greater support for climate mitigation policies, especially among residents with strong community attachment.
Why It Matters
The publication begins with a motivating question: Does vulnerability to rising sea levels shape public opinion and behavior toward climate mitigation policy, and among whom is this relationship strongest?
Its central contribution is to show that living in areas vulnerable to rising sea levels is associated with greater support for climate mitigation policies, especially among residents with strong community attachment.
It matters because the findings connect institutional choices to the way authority, public responsibility, and political behavior are experienced in practice.
Key Findings
- Living in areas susceptible to rising sea levels is positively associated with support for climate mitigation policies.
- This association is strongest among residents with strong attachment to their communities, not those with the greatest financial exposure.
- Susceptibility to other climate disasters (e.g., wildfires, extreme heat) is not associated with increased support for climate mitigation policy.
- The findings are robust across multiple datasets, model specifications, and falsification tests.
- Precinct-level voting data confirm that higher sea-level rise risk is associated with greater support for climate-related ballot initiatives.
Research Design
- Design
- Article
- Data
- Original Lucid surveys (2021–2022); Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape survey (2019–2021); Cooperative Election Study (CES, 2019); ProPublica/Rhodium Group sea-level rise projections; Precinct-level voting returns from Ballotpedia and NCSL; US Census American Community Survey (ACS)
- Geography
- United States (focus on coastal counties and precincts)
- Time Period
- 2019–2022 (surveys); 2010–2021 (ballot propositions); projections to 2100 for sea-level rise risk
- Unit of Analysis
- Individual survey respondents and electoral precincts
- Methods
- Analysis of multiple large-scale survey datasets (including original Lucid surveys, Nationscape, and CES); Precinct-level analysis of voting returns on climate-related ballot propositions; Use of county- and ZIP code-level measures of sea-level rise susceptibility; Regression models controlling for demographic and political variables; Robustness checks and falsification tests
Full Abstract
Public opinion towards human-induced climate change is polarized along partisan lines. Indeed, scholars debate whether direct experiences with the consequences of climate change result in durable effects on opinions or behaviors. Our analysis of hundreds of thousands of survey respondents and nearly 30,000 precinct-level voting returns challenges this emerging consensus for one kind of climate change outcome: rising sea levels. We find that persistent vulnerability to rising sea levels is associated with opinions and behaviors about global warming. Coastal residents affected by sea-level rise are more likely to support climate mitigation policy. This association is strongest among those firmly attached to their communities, as opposed to those with the most to lose financially. We speculate that sea-level rise is exceptionally salient in the minds of those affected as an ever-present reminder of the inevitable toll of climate change.
Citation
Environmental Politics 35 (2): 293-314.
- Venue
- Environmental Politics
- Volume
- 35
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 293-314
- DOI
- 10.1080/09644016.2025.2463860