Weathering the storm: Does recalling a natural disaster drive support for climate mitigation?

Public support for climate action is essential for advancing climate mitigation efforts. However, despite increasing awareness of the urgency of climate change, support for mitigation actions remains relatively low. Therefore, identifying effective ways to enhance public support for climate actions is a key objective for social science research. Our study aims to contribute to this understanding by investigating whether recalling natural disasters, which are becoming increasingly frequent, influences people’s willingness to make sacrifices to mitigate climate change. We analyze two survey experiments carried out in the Italian context testing the effect of recalling two different natural disasters – glaciers collapse and floods – on the willingness to accept limitations to the standard of living to mitigate climate change. We find that recalling natural disasters can impact people’s willingness to accept sacrifices to mitigate climate change. However, we find that this effect is present when the collapse of glaciers is recalled, but it does not hold when floods are recalled. We also find support for the attitudinal updating mechanism: recalling a glacier collapse enhances the willingness to accept sacrifices to mitigate climate change especially among people not believing in the anthropogenic causes of climate change as well as right-wing individuals.