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Political Science and Political Economy Research Seminar

Experience, Narratives, and Climate Change Belief

Milena Djourelova (Cornell University), joint with Ruben Durante, Elliot Motte and Eleonora Patacchini

Tuesday 05 March 2024 14:00 - 15:30

Many of our seminars and public events this year will continue as in person or as hybrid (online and in person) events. Please check our website listings and Twitter feed @STICERD_LSE for updates.

Unless otherwise specified, in-person seminars are open to the public.

Those unable to join the seminars in-person are welcome to participate via zoom if the event is hybrid.


About this event

Linking the location and timing of FEMA-declared disasters to large-scale electoral survey data, we study how the experience of a natural disaster affects climate change beliefs, and how experience interacts with ideology. Contrary to the predictions of standard learning models, we find evidence for divergence in beliefs – exposure to the same disaster event increases stated climate change and environmental concerns among liberals, but decreases them among conservatives, widening the ideological gap by 11-17%. We further provide evidence of conflicting ideological media discourse on climate change in the aftermath of disasters by applying GPT as a novel text annotation approach. Our findings are consistent with natural disasters making the debate around climate change and partisan cleavages on this issue more salient and further polarizing initial beliefs.

The Political Science and Political Economy (PSPE) research group at the LSE brings together faculty and PhD students who do quantitative and/or formal research on political institutions, political behaviour, public policy, and political economy.

The PSPE Research Seminar provides a venue for researchers (mostly from outside of the LSE) to present their work.

These seminars are held on Tuesdays in term time at 14.00-15.30, both ONLINE AND IN PERSON in room SAL 3.05, unless specified otherwise.

Seminar coordinator: Mathilde Emeriau

Contact gov.comms@lse.ac.uk to be added to the mailing list and to recieve the zoom link.

For further information please contact Maddie Giles: gov.comms@lse.ac.uk.