Abstract

Scholars have not determined whether exposure to a changing climate influences public understanding of or concern about climate change. We examine this question using a comprehensive index of public concern about climate change in each state from 1999 to 2017. The index aggregates data from over 400,000 survey respondents in 170 polls. These new estimates of state-level climate concern enable us to exploit geographic variation in locally experienced climate changes over an extended time period. We show that climate concern peaked in 2000 and again in 2017 and that climate concern is modestly responsive to changes in state-level temperatures. Overall, our results suggest that continued increases in temperature are likely to cause public concern about climate change to grow in the future. But a warming climate, on its own, is unlikely to yield a consensus in the mass public about the threat posed by climate change.