A recent New Zealand study has found that if you live right on the coast, you are more likely to believe that climate change is real and something should be done about it, than if you live further inland.

According to the study published in the online journal Plos One, the researchers found that for every 10km from the coast residents lived, they were 0.038 units lower in their belief in climate change, and 0.36 units lower in their support for government regulating carbon emissions.

How did the researchers hit this conclusion? Well they took at sample of about 5,815 New Zealanders randomly selected using census data, and then measured how close they lived to the coast as the crow flies.

The researchers then asked their sample about their educational level, their politics, and what they thought about climate change.

They also looked at how well off the residents were using the 2006 Deprivation Index.

Once they adjusted for all of this - they still found that how far people are from the coast influenced how much they believed in climate change.

The researchers figure this might be because of several reasons - for example people on the coast are more likely to experience large climate related events, they have to worry more about sea-level rise, and they pay more attention to local weather because they like spending time on the beach.

The upshot of all of this is - the researchers figure that in order to better communicate issues regarding climate change campaigners should focus on making their campaigns relevant to the people they're talking to.

"What the psychological distance evidence suggests, though, is that they may be able to create targeted campaigns—for example, discussing with individual metropolitan areas the effects they might expect to experience, and how to prepare for them," the researchers wrote, noting that such campaigns have already been shown to work.

"Additionally, if the goal is to increase awareness of the risks in general, expending more energy on inland communities may be helpful, as it is clear that coastal communities are already slightly more risk-aware," the researchers concluded.