Assessing Diverse Anthropogenic Attributions as Pathways to Climate Action
Using a 2023 representative survey from the Philippines, this study finds that scientific, spiritual, and religious attributions for climate change all effectively motivate diverse forms of climate action, with religious beliefs uniquely predicting support for economic policies, thereby highlighting the need to integrate multiple knowledge frameworks into climate communication and policy.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
When people think about why the climate is changing, they often imagine a single story: scientists measuring carbon dioxide and proving that human activity is the cause. This scientific view is powerful and widely accepted, but it is not the only way people make sense of a warming world. In many parts of the globe, including the Philippines, people also understand environmental shifts through spiritual and religious lenses. Some see climate disasters as a sign that humanity has upset the natural balance of Mother Earth, while others view them as a moral consequence of human wrongdoing, a response from a higher power to our actions. For decades, climate advocates and researchers have operated under the assumption that to get people to act, they must first convince them of the scientific facts. This idea, often called the "knowledge-deficit model," suggests that if people just knew more about the science, they would naturally want to help. However, this approach risks ignoring the deep, culturally rooted ways that many communities already understand their responsibility to the planet.
A team of researchers set out to test whether these different ways of knowing actually lead to different levels of action. They wanted to know if believing in a scientific cause for climate change motivates people to act differently than believing in a spiritual or religious cause. To find out, they turned to the Philippines, a nation frequently battered by typhoons and floods, where scientific, spiritual, and religious explanations for climate change coexist and are often promoted by the same institutions, from government agencies to the Catholic Church. The researchers conducted a large survey of 1,000 Filipino adults, asking them not just about their beliefs, but about their willingness to take specific steps to help the climate. These steps ranged from personal habits like recycling and avoiding air travel, to collective efforts like signing petitions or voting for climate-friendly candidates, and even to supporting economic policies that might cost them more money, such as higher taxes or prices.
The study asked participants to rate how much they agreed with four different explanations for climate change. One explanation was the standard scientific view that human emissions are the cause. Another was a spiritual view that humans have disturbed the natural balance of the Earth. A third was a religious view that climate disasters are a form of divine punishment for immoral behavior. The fourth was a non-human explanation, suggesting that climate change is simply a natural cycle unrelated to people. The researchers then looked to see which of these beliefs predicted a willingness to act.
The results challenged the idea that only scientific understanding drives change. The researchers found that people who endorsed any of the three human-centered explanations—scientific, spiritual, or religious—were significantly more willing to take action than those who did not. In fact, the strength of the motivation was surprisingly similar across all three groups. Whether a person believed climate change was caused by carbon emissions, a disruption of Mother Earth, or divine judgment, they were equally likely to say yes to changing their lifestyle, joining a protest, or voting for a climate-conscious candidate. The only explanation that failed to motivate action was the one that removed humans from the story entirely. When people believed climate change was just a natural process with no human cause, they showed no greater willingness to act than those who were unsure.
One finding stood out as particularly unique. While all three human-centered beliefs drove general action, only the religious belief was strongly linked to a willingness to support economic policies that involve personal financial sacrifice. People who viewed climate change as a moral issue tied to divine judgment were more likely to say they would accept higher taxes or reduced economic growth to solve the problem. This suggests that for some, the moral weight of religious conviction can be a more powerful lever for economic change than scientific data alone. The study also revealed that these beliefs are not mutually exclusive. Many people held multiple views at once, and while joint endorsement of religious and scientific or religious and spiritual views sometimes led to greater action than holding just one view, the researchers found that combined attributions are not always significantly stronger than singular ones. In some cases, adding a scientific view to a spiritual or religious one did not increase the willingness to act.
These findings suggest that the most important factor in motivating climate action is not whether a person understands the science, but whether they believe humans are responsible for the problem. If a person sees climate change as something caused by human activity, they are more likely to feel a sense of agency and responsibility to fix it, regardless of whether that belief comes from a textbook, a church, or a spiritual tradition. This does not mean that scientific education is unimportant, but it does mean that relying on it exclusively may miss a vast number of people who are already motivated by their own cultural and spiritual frameworks. For climate communicators and policymakers, the lesson is clear: to build a broad coalition for action, it is effective to speak the language of the community, whether that language is scientific, spiritual, or religious, as long as it centers on human responsibility.
Drowning in papers in your field?
Get daily digests of the most novel papers matching your research keywords — with technical summaries, in your language.