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Variations in climate change belief systems across 110 geographic areas

Nature Climate Change volume 15, pages 947–953 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Climate beliefs shape engagement with climate action, yet research often overlooks their interconnections. This research frames climate beliefs as a belief system and examines two structural features: density (the strength of all connections) and inconsistency (conflicts between beliefs). Using Facebook survey data from 110 geographic areas (n = 99,074), we show that global north presents higher density networks, where climate beliefs are more tightly correlated, while many global south areas have positive but less interconnected beliefs. Inconsistency appears in geographic areas where opposition to reducing fossil fuel use conflicts with support for renewable energy and government prioritization of climate policies, such as in the Middle East. Information exposure is positively correlated with density and negatively with inconsistency. Gross domestic product per capita is positively associated with density and carbon resource dependence positively correlates with inconsistency. These findings offer communication strategies to enhance climate belief endurance while addressing conflicting beliefs that may undermine climate action.

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Fig. 1: Belief systems of nine countries representing different regions.
Fig. 2: Density of climate change belief systems across geographic areas.
Fig. 3: Belief density and stance across 110 geographic areas.
Fig. 4: Inconsistency of climate change belief system across geographic areas.

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Data availability

Data aggregated at the area level can be accessed on our Open Science Framework (OSF) project page at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/ASY54 (ref. 49). The complete dataset is proprietary and available upon submitting a request form via https://dataforgood.facebook.com/dfg/tools/climate-change-opinion-survey#accessdata.

Code availability

All code used to analyse data and create figures for this article is available on our OSF project page at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/ASY54 (ref. 49).

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Acknowledgements

A.L. discloses support for the research of this work from the MacArthur Foundation (grant number 21-2108-155887-CLS), the Schmidt Family Foundation (grant number G-23-66041) and a gift from King Philanthropies.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Sanguk Lee, Marija Verner, Matthew H. Goldberg, Jennifer Carman, Seth A. Rosenthal & Anthony Leiserowitz

  2. Division of Media and Communication, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Sanguk Lee

  3. Department of Journalism, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    Hong Tien Vu

  4. School of Communication and Arts, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland, Australia

    Jagadish Thaker

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  1. Sanguk Lee
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Contributions

S.L. and M.H.G. conceived the study idea. S.L. conducted the data analysis. M.V. assisted in curating external data sources. A.L. secured funding for the project. S.L., H.T.V., J.T., M.V., M.H.G., J.C., S.A.R. and A.L. contributed to writing the paper.

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Correspondence to Sanguk Lee.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Climate Change thanks Jianxun Yang and the other, anonymous, reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Table 1 List of Nine Regions and 110 Geographic Areas
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Extended Data Table. 2 Labels and Question Items
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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Sections 1–4, Table 1–8 and Figs. 1–18.

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Lee, S., Vu, H.T., Thaker, J. et al. Variations in climate change belief systems across 110 geographic areas. Nat. Clim. Chang. 15, 947–953 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02410-1

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