Introduction

This article focuses on barriers and pathways to climate action among nature lovers in Canada. The overwhelming majority of Canadians participate in outdoor activities12, and potentially see the effects of climate change. In the United States, approximately one-third of adults are birdwatchers (https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/a-third-of-american-adults-are-birdwatchers-according-to-nationwide-survey/). This study asks how people who enjoy spending time out in nature perceive and talk about climate change. Although some nature lovers might be well-versed in biology, many could be considered laypeople9,10 regarding climate change.

Despite general agreement in both Canada and the United States that climate change is happening, primarily human-caused, and a reason for worry1,2, the majority of people in both countries are reluctant to talk about it1,3,4,5. Discussing climate change with family and friends increases knowledge about climate change and also demonstrates that others in one’s circle care about the issue6. People are more receptive to messages from people within their social network than outside it6, and more likely to engage in climate actions if someone they like and respect asks them to7.

The Five Canadas of Climate Change4 is a methodological offspring of Global Warming’s Six Americas3, in which respondents are categorised along a continuum from Alarmed to Dismissive, about climate change in the former case or global warming in the latter case. While global warming is only one aspect of climate change, the two terms are often used interchangeably3,13. Climate change has been the predominant term in Canada for many years, steering the discourse away from consideration of global warming as benign or even welcome in Canada (e.g., https://financialpost.com/opinion/joe-oliver-heres-a-truth-few-dare-to-utter-canada-will-benefit-from-climate-change). In Canada, those Concerned but not Alarmed about climate change are less confident in their beliefs than the Alarmed, relatively unlikely to talk much about the issue with family and friends, and less likely to engage in climate-friendly actions4.

Nature lovers are supported by countless clubs and organisations focused on recreational and volunteer activities, such as hiking, cross-country skiing, bird watching, hunting, fishing, trail maintenance, tree planting, and invasive species removal. All of these nature-related organisations offer social opportunities where their members could potentially talk about climate change. There is copious literature on the environmental movement but little on movement-adjacent groups and their members. One such study of the Audubon Society found that birders tended to distance themselves from the environmental movement8. Another study found that the environmental movement was segmented into conservationist, reformist, and radical organisations and questioned whether conservationists were actually part of the movement14. This article focuses on people in conservation and conservation-adjacent groups who enjoy spending time in nature—what I call nature-related organisations.

In this study, I interviewed representatives of such organisations across Ontario—Canada’s most populous province. This article adds to the literature on laypeople’s understanding of climate change9,10,11. Almost all interviewees noticed effects of climate change and self-identified as either Concerned or Alarmed about climate change during the interview. Some interviewees expressed concern about the future of their offspring or their organisation’s activities, providing possible pathways to climate action. Others engaged in scepticism, gradualism, catastrophism15, or distancing10,16,17, which could be barriers to action.

Interviewees shared that group members tended to avoid talking about climate change, as found by Norgaard18. Geiger and Swim found that people were less willing to talk about climate change if they thought that their views were different from those of their group19. The general degree of concern about climate change in my interviewees, however, suggests that many of these groups could be receptive to talking about climate change, increasing the possibility of climate action by individual members and/or the group as a whole7.

I continue with a discussion of the relevant literature from environmental sociology and psychology, related to climate change discourse and confirmation bias, respectively. Then I present statistics that establish that climate change is a concern for the majority of US and Canadian residents, but that there is a reluctance in both countries to talk about climate change.

Climate change originally came to light as a scientific phenomenon and has often been communicated by scientists using a natural sciences lens20. Lay understandings of climate change are formed through media discourse and other social contexts10. In very general terms, there have traditionally been three additional climate change discourses: scepticism, gradualism, and catastrophism15.

Climate scepticism has been part of the discourse almost as long as has climate change. Conservative think tanks in the United States were sowing doubt about the reality of climate change as far back as the 1990s21. Five reasons cited by climate sceptics as to why they doubt that climate change exists are: 1) climate change is natural, 2) climate change is overhyped, 3) the science is faulty, 4) climate change is not happening, and 5) climate change is a conspiracy22,23. Haltinner and Sarathchandra found a political narrative around a global conspiracy as well as a religious narrative around “God’s plan”24. Climate change denial is an extreme form of scepticism that rejects evidence21.

Gradualism assumes that climate change is happening slowly enough that economies will be able to adjust11,15. Temporal distancing is similar, portraying climate change as a future phenomenon10,16,17. Distancing decreases the perceived urgency of climate action as people tend to discount future consequences9,10,16,17,25. On the other hand, an affinity25 and sense of responsibility9 for future generations, such as one’s children, could increase interest in action. According to Kempton et al., “[t]he desire to protect the environment for our descendants appears to be a nearly universal American value” (p. 101)9. Climate action, however, is not the same as protecting the environment.

The environmental movement has pointed to the potential for a catastrophic future if urgent action is not taken on climate change26. Al Gore’s 2006 film, An Inconvenient Truth, is an example. Unfortunately, history shows “that exaggerated claims of catastrophic risks from even real and serious environmental problems can backfire in terms of stimulating public concern and appropriate policy responses” (p. 357)27. In response to failure to make significant progress on climate change, factions within the movement are now looking at alternatives to a discourse of catastrophism26.

According to psychological literature, heuristic reasoning is used to make decisions in situations of uncertainty28. Heuristic processes, however, may be prone to bias28,29. Confirmation bias is “a tendency to look for confirmatory evidence for our hypotheses” (p. 603), or to hold onto existing ideas and reject new ones that contradict them30. As an example, Halford and Sheehan note that if people have faith that technological solutions to climate change can be found, they might ignore climate change messaging30. Nickerson adds that this preferential treatment of information is done unintentionally, even if it is motivated by an interest in defending one’s beliefs29. Further, it not only applies to false beliefs but also true beliefs, making one’s certainty in those beliefs stronger than the evidence suggests29. The current polarisation over climate change demonstrates confirmation bias in both directions31.

Nickerson describes five different types of confirmation biases: 1) hypothesis-determined information seeking, when people seek out information to support their hypothesis or beliefs and then interpret it in a way that supports their beliefs; 2) the preferential treatment of evidence supporting existing beliefs, or “my-side bias,” putting greater emphasis on information that supports their beliefs and downplaying, ignoring, forgetting, or inaccurately recalling contradictory information; 3) looking only or primarily for positive cases, resulting in “illusory” confirmation; 4) overweighting positive confirmatory instances, that is, requiring less confirmatory evidence to accept a hypothesis and more to reject it; and 5) seeing what one is looking for, that is, finding patterns where none necessarily exist29. Scientific information from sources trusted by the recipient may be able to correct such biases31.

The Climate Change in the American Mind series1 has been tracking opinions of US residents on global warming since 2008. The October 2023 survey indicated that 72 percent of US respondents thought that global warming is happening, 58 percent acknowledged that it is primarily human-caused, and 65 percent were somewhat or very worried about global warming1. Results from a representative 2016-2017 pan-Canadian survey showed higher levels for each of these questions: 92 percent thought that climate change was happening, 70 percent thought that it was mainly human-caused, and 76 were somewhat or very worried2.

Global Warming’s Six Americas, based on the above US survey series, categorises the US population according to their degree of concern about climate change3. Out of a continuum of Alarmed, Concerned, Cautious, Disengaged, Doubtful, and Dismissive about global warming, Concerned has perennially been the most popular category. A 2017 survey from the Five Canadas of Climate Change showed that 25 percent of Canadians were Alarmed, 45 percent were Concerned, and the remainder were Disengaged, Doubtful, or Dismissive about climate change4.

Despite the concern, 65 percent of US respondents said that they rarely or never talk about global warming with family or friends and only 20 percent heard people they know talking about global warming at least once a month1. While 63 percent of US respondents felt some personal responsibility to help reduce global warming, only 40 percent felt normative expectations from others to do so (injunctive norm) and only 35 percent believed that their family and friends were doing so (descriptive norm)1. Not surprisingly, those who perceived these norms were more likely to talk about global warming5. Of the Alarmed, 83 percent in the United States5 and 95 percent in Canada4 talked about climate change with friends and family occasionally or often. In the United States, only 38 percent of the Concerned and less than 15 percent of the other categories did so5. In Canada, the Concerned were much less likely than the Alarmed to feel very informed about climate change or very confident in their beliefs, and they were also much less likely to talk about climate change with family and friends4. Discussing climate change with family and friends is a step towards climate action, however, as it creates “a positive feedback loop that encourages deeper engagement with the issue of climate change” (p. 14805) and also demonstrates that others care about the issue6.

This lack of norms to discuss or act on climate change can be compared with Norway, where Norgaard found that people had a tacit agreement not to talk about climate change despite obvious changes in their weather patterns that were affecting their economically- and culturally-significant sport of skiing18. Birders in the United States avoided controversial issues, aligning themselves with the Audubon Society’s centrist stance8. In surveys of university students, Geiger and Swim found that a reluctance to talk about climate change was related to one’s perception that other people had a different view of climate change than oneself19. Further, the reluctance was related to fear of appearing incompetent in the discussion, rather than fear of being disliked. Thus, this reluctance could be overcome by learning more19,32.

Another obstacle to talking about or acting on climate change is the finite pool of worry, wherein individuals have “only so much capacity for worry” (p. 114)33. A smaller number of tweets about climate change during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to previously has been explained as evidence of a finite pool of worry34. As further confirmation, those tweets contained more positive sentiments and fewer negative sentiments, such as worry, than before the pandemic. Thus, other issues could crowd out worry about climate change.

Results

The 33 interviewees in this study were board members or employees of nature-related non-profit organisations in Ontario, Canada. For details on the sampling process, interviewees, and interviews, see the Methods section. The following analysis combines the responses of open-ended and closed-ended questions asked during the interviews. The first subsection describes the interviewees. The second subsection establishes whether these nature lovers had noticed the effects of climate change. Next, I analyse a series of questions probing their individual level of concern to determine individual barriers and pathways to climate action. The final subsection gleans information from the broader interviews on the social nature of these organisations and the potential for discussing climate change, as a pathway to climate action.

Nature lovers

In response to whether the interviewees considered their organisation’s members to be nature lovers, 87 percent said yes. The remainder agreed that some of them were, but others may have been members for other reasons. On the yes side, I heard that “you wouldn’t be a hiker unless you liked nature.” A representative of a conservation organisation stated that their supporters “are either into actually walking the trails and engaging with the outdoors or they are concerned about the environment.” On the more nuanced side, one comment was that “I think anyone who likes to be outside, there’s a piece of them that is concerned about the environment and is concerned about nature. But that’s a pretty broad brush to say we’re all like that.” Based on these comments, a reasonable definition of “nature lover” for this study would be someone who enjoys being outdoors and appreciates the natural environment.

Thirty interviewees were asked which of Global Warming’s Six Americas3 best described them regarding climate change, as a heuristic device. As a result, 40 percent self-identified as Alarmed, 47 percent as Concerned, 10 percent as Cautious, and 3 percent as Disengaged. This is skewed towards alarm in comparison to both US3 and Canadian4 general population results but, in all cases, Concerned was the largest category. Asked whether they were worried about climate change, 81 percent said yes, 16 percent said maybe, and 3 percent (1 person) said no.

Noticing climate change

To gauge whether interviewees had noticed evidence of climate change, I asked “Has climate change or biodiversity loss caused problems for your organisation? Or have you seen changes?” Early responses to a more limited question suggested that a broader question would elicit better responses. My hypothesis was that nature lovers would most likely identify nature-related effects of climate change in any case. The analysis here focuses on their climate change responses. Some interviewees mentioned multiple changes.

The first thing to note is that only one interviewee—a hiker—had not noticed any local effects. Two others denied noticing changes but later mentioned local evidence of climate change. Another interviewee had heard of changes in wildlife on his organisation’s property but declined to attribute them to climate change. Four others only mentioned biodiversity losses unconnected to climate change, partly due to the construction of the question. The vast majority of interviewees, however, did indeed notice evidence of climate change. The types of evidence that topped the list were changes in biodiversity ranges, weather, seasons, and wildfires.

Changes in range

This response was common across the breadth of organisations other than cross-country skiers. Hunters talked about deer expanding northward into moose territory. Anglers noted that warm water fish species were thriving while cold water species were in danger. Naturalists mentioned shifts in bird populations. Five different interviewees referred to the northward migration of ticks. Three predicted evolutions in viable tree species. All told, 16 of 33 interviewees mentioned changes in the ranges of flora and/or fauna.

Weather and seasons

Twenty-one interviewees talked about shifts in the seasons, weather, and water levels. These interrelated issues were particularly noticed by trail-based and lake-related organisations. All six cross-country skiers and snowshoers noted the shorter or later-starting ski season, although one displayed my-side bias, downplaying the comment with “only anecdotally and without any scientific background.” Two lake-related groups invoked scientific data recording the shortening of winter ice coverage on the lakes. Two hikers attributed the encroachment of ticks to shorter winters. Other season-related evidence included shifts in the timing of fall leaf colours, tracked through “citizen science,” where members report to the organisation.

Ten interviewees mentioned flooding, droughts, and changes in lake levels. A conservationist described it this way: “It goes from extremes of drought to too much rain. … It’s feast or famine. And so, you see the wetlands, you know, kind of expand and contract.” An employee at a lake-related organisation talked about “water levels rising suddenly, or drought at the opposite extreme where you can’t recreationally boat,” referring to the impact on members’ activities.

Other weather-related comments referred to hotter or more extreme temperatures (five people), “more severe” or “unpredictable” storms (three people), or simply “extreme,” “unstable,” or “weird” weather. Four mentioned a loss of trees in extreme weather events. One young communications professional included “tsunamis and crazy earthquakes” as weather changes. The same person had earlier outlined a wide range of climate change conspiracy theories circulating among young people22,23,24. This implicates social media as a source of misinformation.

Wildfires

An unexpected situation arose not long after my second interview. Smoke from wildfires blanketed Ontario for the next few interviews. Record-setting high temperatures and drought conditions linked to climate change were named as the primary cause of the wildfires (https://natural-resources.canada.ca/simply-science/canadas-record-breaking-wildfires-2023-fiery-wake-call/25303). As a result, climate change became much more salient. Eleven interviewees, scattered in time, mentioned “smoke” or “fire” at some point.

The wildfires provided examples of confirmation bias in both directions. One Alarmed employee expressed bias by potentially overweighting evidence of climate change: “With all these wildfires and everything, [climate change is] hard to deny.” A sceptical hiker demonstrated the opposite bias:

“I was asking our [local authority] the other day how prone we were to forest fires in our area, and his answer was that our forests are quite resilient to fire because of the, I guess, the biodiversity in the forest. Many more deciduous trees, not so many evergreens…. So, from that point of view, when it comes to fires, I feel a little more comfortable [chuckling].”

This is an example of hypothesis-determined information seeking29. We are left to wonder what else the authority said that might have been ignored.

Personal barriers and pathways

Determining personal barriers and pathways to climate action was done by combining the above responses with a series of closed-ended questions including the Six Americas3 categorisation, with an invitation to comment further. Responses divided into concerns related to their organisation’s activities, frustration with others, and the distancing10,16,17, gradualism11,15, scepticism15,22,23,24, and catastrophism15 discourses. Two employees professionally focused on their organisation, while another two admitted a lack of knowledge.

Concern about the organisation’s activities

Thirteen interviewees discussed the effects of climate change on their organisation’s activities. Some mentioned multiple effects. Six were cross-country skiers, and most of them agreed that climate change posed a threat to their sport.

“Not only is the season is getting shorter but, there’s definitely this more cyclical pattern of warming and so, you know, particularly recreational skiers, they’re not gonna go do a sport where, every time they go out, the conditions are treacherous because it’s icy and rainy or, you know, if you can’t groom the conditions properly, it becomes really challenging to ski and unpleasant and dangerous. And, so, people will pick something else. Right?”

An Alarmed hiker said,

“People are much more aware of weather and how that affects the different hikes. That’s just growing in impact. You know, where before, people, I think, would say, ‘Oh, yeah, we know. It’s just a little rain,’ it’s, like, ‘Nope, gotta really take this seriously.”

Two interviewees told stories about Lyme disease from ticks. Four mentioned flooding or changes in water levels affecting their activities. Hunters and anglers noted that changes in species ranges meant “hav[ing] to travel further and further north.” A volunteer organiser despaired that increasing temperatures limited their window for volunteer activities. Concern about the future of one’s chosen recreational pursuit could be a pathway to action on climate change.

Distancing and gradualism

Eleven interviewees, spanning the range from Cautious to Alarmed, implied at some point that climate change was not a big problem yet, through either temporal distancing10,16,17 or gradualism11,15. Among them were three of the four who denied seeing evidence of climate change, two of whom engaged in gradualism. The hiker said: “I do feel that we will end up arriving at solutions because they are economically smart decisions.” This is the same confirmation bias identified by Halford and Sheehan30. A Concerned naturalist demonstrated distancing: “They say that eventually … our tree species are going to change as well, too. But that’s not right away.”

Altogether, five embraced the gradualist discourse. An Alarmed board member expressed hope: “The crisis … is moving fast enough that people are beginning to get worried about it, but it’s also maybe not so fast that we can’t still do something about it.” A middle-aged employee was Concerned: “We have a lot of people that are working on this, and maybe there is some, you know, technology that could help or changes in our approach that we will finally adapt.” These comments show variation in the level of concern but also faith in our current systems, which could be a barrier to climate action.

Six of the eleven mentioned fear or worry for their children, grandchildren, future children, students, or simply “future generations.” Two were Cautious; three were Concerned. This could indicate temporal distancing, in that climate change is seen to be more of a problem in the future, delaying the need for action10,16,17. One was Alarmed. Affinity or a sense of responsibility for those affected could increase interest in taking action9,25. One of the six accepted generational complicity in the problem: “It stresses me that it’s my kids that are going to be really seeing the consequences of our mistakes.” Hanson-Easey et al. found the same sense of collective responsibility in their focus groups10.

Scepticism and catastrophism

Scepticism15,22,23,24 was demonstrated through confirmation bias. Only three interviewees expressed scepticism. A hiker countered the increased incidence of ticks and Lyme disease with: “There are more opossums that eat the ticks, so they’re a welcoming sight [chuckling].” This alludes to the scepticism discourse that climate change is natural and also demonstrates my-side bias, giving preferential treatment to the appearance of opossums and downplaying health risks. The other two also exhibited my-side bias, referring to climate change as being just one possible cause of flooding. One of the three shared conspiracy theories22,23,24. None of the three were outright deniers, but scepticism might create obstacles to effectively talking about climate change. In another interview, an employee frequently repeated that “everything we do is science-based,” which sounded like a rehearsed defence, possibly against sceptical members concerned that the organisation was acting as part of a political conspiracy23,24.

At the other end of the spectrum, although 40 percent of interviewees self-identified as Alarmed about climate change, only one interviewee could be considered as using a catastrophist discourse15. Regarding the Six Americas3 continuum, she asserted that there should be a category for “terrified.” She was the only one to mention a “climate emergency. … It just feels like, you know, the more you learn about it, the more you realise that time is very quickly running out.” This extreme concern could be a pathway to action, except that it might be alienating27. In this particular case, there was a conflict between her original activist intentions as founder of the organisation and its current situation as a conservation group.

Frustration with others

Almost everyone else who did not express concern about their activities or engage in one of the other discourses instead expressed frustration with others, although I did not ask about frustration. Some frustration was directed at the government, politicians, corporations, or lobbyists. Frustration is a stage on the way to mobilisation35, so it could provide a pathway to climate action. Others were frustrated with individuals. Hanson-Easey et al. found that some people expressed a moral judgment against those who were not concerned about climate change10. I found something similar. An Alarmed naturalist exclaimed, “The general public never ceases to amaze me at how disengaged and dismissive they can be!” A young conservationist expressed frustration with older people who had told her, “It’s your job now. You’re gonna be the next leaders,” thereby relinquishing their own responsibility.

Two parents of teens expressed concern about the disengagement of young people, but rather than judging the youth, they blamed it on the messaging. One lamented:

“I look at my children. I think everybody’s just disconnected, because they think there’s nothing they can do about it and the whole world’s gone to hell in a hand basket. And, if you get your youth to disengage, you have a real problem. So it’s, I think, the negativity of the journalism. … The headlines around climate change, I think they’re not helping the cause.”

These two interviewees were genuinely worried and at a loss.

One interviewee was himself a Disengaged young person. As a parent of young children, he noted that “of the million things I thought of this week, none of them were climate change. Right? And even in the last, everything that’s happened in the last few years, very rarely did I think about climate change.” The day-to-day worries associated with parenthood could lessen worry about the more nebulous issue of climate change, demonstrating a finite pool of worry33,34.

Lack of knowledge

Two of the four who only mentioned biodiversity loss admitted a lack of knowledge about climate change. Both were middle-aged employees of small organisations, and both were Concerned and worried about climate change. One said, “Climate change has always been in the back of my head in terms of, like, ‘How do we fit this in?’” Lack of knowledge points to a need for talking about climate change in some organisations as a pathway to action.

The social side of nature-related organisations

Social opportunities and the degree of camaraderie offered by nature-related organisations constitute a pathway to talking about climate change. Hiking and cross-country skiing groups primarily hold active outdoor events. One cross-country skiing group rents a bus to take members to skiing venues. “The bus is very social. Provides a really nice little venue for people to socialise.” A hiker from an older adults group said, “The hiking community is a small community. We’re retired. … So, it’s a social network.”

Naturalist groups tend to have regular indoor meetings with invited speakers as well as organised nature walks. A naturalist noted that their indoor meetings are “a fairly social affair.” Another shared that, after a nature presentation, “all the people … mingle. So they might talk about certain issues in their little group.”

Volunteer opportunities also tend to be social events. Trail-related groups organise trail maintenance days. Conservation groups organise tree plantings and invasive species removal. One interviewee suggested that their volunteers “just like the camaraderie. They like to come out and work with other people and accomplish stuff.”

Talking about climate change

There were three streams of comments about the potential for talking about climate change among members. The most prevalent was avoidance18. Three different interviewees said simply that climate change “doesn’t come up.” A hiker said, “I think it’s one of those things that, quite honestly, in many ways, it’s almost like people just avoid it.” The extremely alarmed interviewee shared that “one of our board members said to us one time, not that long ago, that… a lot of people don’t want to hear about climate change.”

The second stream was obstructionist, and was only heard in relation to hunting and fishing. One hunter said that, among their membership, “there are some extremists that think that climate change is a hoax.” Another said, “there are [members] who are very vocal in their opposition, or their denialism, if you will, of climate change.” It should not be construed from this, however, that all hunters and anglers are obstructionist as I also heard that most are ardent conservationists.

The third stream was open-mindedness. A hiker allowed that, “Members are welcome to talk about it basically amongst themselves. … I think everybody also respects the personal advocacy that everybody does.” Another hiker thought that “people are pretty open-minded about other people’s views on it. I mean, it was the same with COVID. … I guess you just have to be tolerant of people that you don’t agree with.” One cross-country skier agreed to be interviewed precisely because she was interested in getting her club talking about climate change:

“It could be another way for members to interact with each other. Because a lot of times, we need excuses to talk with each other. … If we kind of brought up the question or the interest, it could be another level at which members would talk with each other. And since it does support or help with climate change, or mitigate the negative effects of climate change with respect to the impact on our environment and therefore our sport, then there could be more motivation to do certain things. And if we get more people in the world doing things like this, then it could make a difference.”

This response illustrates the potential for nature-related organisations to increase talk about climate change and thereby increase climate action.

Discussion

In this study, I interviewed members of nature-related organisations—people who are regularly out in nature by choice. My basic hypothesis was that, due to their interest in nature, these people would notice effects of climate change. I set out to confirm that and hear how they made sense of climate change and how concerned they were about it. Taking that one step further, I hoped to reveal barriers and pathways to climate action.

As expected, most interviewees noticed changes due to climate change. As groups spending time outdoors, the majority noted changes in the weather, water levels, or seasons. Almost half saw shifts in the ranges of flora and fauna. Science was occasionally invoked both to prove the existence of climate change through data collection and to justify scepticism if there was only anecdotal evidence at hand. Confirmation biases28,29,30,31 were also displayed both to support and to question evidence of climate change.

Referring to Global Warming’s Six Americas3, the vast majority of these nature lovers were either Concerned or Alarmed about climate change. Close to half were concerned about the effects of climate change on their organisation’s activities. Others were frustrated with politicians or with people who are not concerned about climate change. Two admitted a lack of knowledge but were worried about climate change. The degree of awareness and concern about climate change suggests that these organisations could be receptive to climate change discussion.

On the other hand, a number of potential barriers to climate action were identified. All interviewees who were not overly worried about climate change displayed gradualism11,15, scepticism15,22,23,24, or a finite pool of worry33,34. Others who used gradualist language were worried but expressed hope for solutions. Some, spanning the range from Cautious to Alarmed about climate change, demonstrated temporal distancing10,16,17. Most of the distancers expressed concern for generations coming after them, such as their children and grandchildren. Rather than delaying the need for action, that could be a pathway to action through greater affinity25 and a sense of responsibility9. Some of these barriers could be overcome with increased discussion of climate change6,7,31,32.

The organisations themselves represent a potential pathway to climate action through opportunities for social interaction. The regular events held by nature-related organisations have a social component in which members could potentially talk about climate change. The degree of camaraderie mentioned by interviewees suggests that members may develop friendships. Alarmed members, who are more likely to want to talk with friends about climate change4, could help increase the confidence of less concerned members about their climate change beliefs6,19. Some organisations have opportunities to bring in expert speakers, which could help to dispel misinformation and further increase confidence19,31,32. Encouraging these organisations to create opportunities for discussing climate change with this receptive audience could help to increase the acceptability of climate action6,7,31,32.

Attitudes towards discussing climate change in a group setting coalesced around avoidance, open-mindedness, and obstructionism. Although these organisations tend to avoid conflict by choosing a centrist path8 and their members tended to avoid talking about climate change18, my findings suggest that members were fairly unified in their concern about climate change. If they realised that, they might be more open to talking about climate change19. Some expressed open-mindedness. More challenging would be organisations with vocal obstructionists among their members.

This article provides an update on laypeople’s understanding of climate change9,10,11. Learning how concerned people are about climate change provides starting points to build on. As a study primarily at the individual level, this article lays the groundwork for further research on pathways and barriers at the organisational level. The interview questions analysed in this study were part of a larger study on the behaviour of nature-related organisations themselves. Future analysis will explore additional pathways and barriers at the organisational level. Follow-up research will include participant observation with a small collection of nature-related organisations, including making and observing interventions related to climate change.

Methods

Data

The data for this study comprised 32 semi-structured interviews with 33 representatives of nature-related organisations located in Ontario, Canada. One of the interviews was with a husband and wife who were both on the board of their organisation. The interviews were conducted via Zoom between May of 2023 and January of 2024. Interviews were between 45 min and 2 h in duration, with the exception of one 20-min phone conversation. Interviews consisted of a mix of open-ended and closed-ended questions. Questions included background information on the organisation and its membership, its approach to climate change and biodiversity loss, and questions about the interviewee personally. Closed-ended response options were derived from the literature. Embedding closed-ended questions within a qualitative interview enabled the classification of qualitative responses as well as the contextualisation of closed-ended responses.

There is no comprehensive list of nature-related organisations in Ontario. The sampling frame was initially generated from the membership lists of Ontario Nature and Cross Country Ski Ontario—umbrella organisations providing support to smaller organisations throughout the province. I categorised those members by focus: conservation, naturalists, hiking and trails, cross-country skiing, and hunting and fishing. I used the seven regional classifications from Ontario Nature in a quasi-random sampling exercise resulting in approximately one organisation of each focus within each region. Purposive sampling was used to fill gaps, which included additional internet searches. The sample of 32 was chosen from a sampling frame of 284 organisations. There would be many similar organisations that did not make the frame through not paying membership to a provincial body or through enjoying an activity not included in this study, such as canoeing.

Attention was paid to the size of the organisation and its catchment area. Exactly half of the organisations had no paid staff and were represented by a board member. Board members also spoke for three of the ten organisations in the 1–10 paid staff category. Staff members spoke for the rest. In terms of catchment area, the sample broke into thirds between less than 100,000 people (31 percent), 100,000 to 500,000 people (31 percent), and more than 500,000 people including province-wide organisations (38 percent). The intent was not to be representative but to gather a wide range of perspectives. Excluding four provincial organisations, 28 groups interviewed had a combined membership of over 22,000 people or about 0.14 percent of the population of Ontario. With the provincial organisations, the reach would be an order of magnitude greater.

The 20 board members interviewed were exclusively white, almost entirely over age 50, with slightly more males than females. Staff members, in contrast, were almost entirely under age 55, mostly female, and included two who were Black, Indigenous, or persons of colour (BIPOC). Together, the interviewees comprised a skewed cross-section of the population of Ontario.

Methodology

The Zoom transcripts were edited for accuracy then loaded into NVivo for data management and visualisation. I manually coded the interviews within NVivo using a grounded theory approach36. Codes were initially gleaned from the literature then added to as themes arose from the data. Themes and closed-ended responses were then organised by interviewee in Excel.

Closed-ended questions asked during the interviews included organisational data, personal demographics, and attitudes and emotions regarding climate change. Attitudes included a self-assessment according to Global Warming’s Six Americas3 via a list of the six terms from Alarmed to Dismissive pasted into the chat window. Emotions were probed via a series of questions asking “Do you feel [this emotion] about climate change?” Hope and worry were two of the emotions asked, with response options of yes, maybe, or no.

Bivariate statistics were calculated to check the degree of alignment between the Six Americas3 self-assessment and worry. Figure 1 shows that those who expressed worry about climate change registered more alarm than those who were less worried. Interestingly, of the six who said maybe or no about worry, two were in the youngest age category (25–34) and three were in the oldest category (65+). Future research could explore the age association further. The one who said no was one of the first interviewees and does not appear in this graph.

Fig. 1: Frequency of response to “Do you feel worry about climate change?”
figure 1

Frequency of response to “Do you feel worry about climate change?” by attitude towards climate change as self-identified using the Six Americas3 classification scheme (n = 30). Maybe = blue. Yes = orange

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A check on the validity of the Six Americas3 self-assessment was conducted in March 2024 as an email follow-up using the 4-question online SASSY tool (https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/sassy/). The response rate was 48 percent. For those who responded to both the interview self-assessment question and SASSY, the results were identical for 69 percent. SASSY produced a slightly more alarmed response for the remainder.

An unexpected environmental event had an effect on the study. Historically-unusual wildfire smoke blanketed Ontario for much of June 2023, and was mentioned by a number of interviewees from my third interviewee onward. The slightly elevated response on the SASSY validity check indicates that a possible lasting increase in level of alarm may have resulted from the wildfires, rather than a temporary blip.

As a qualitative study using a pseudo-random sample on a population defined for the purpose of this study, there is no guarantee that the people or organisations interviewed were representative of any population. I intended to study how ordinary people who enjoy being out in nature perceive and talk about climate change. The demographically skewed nature of the interviewees puts the expectation of “ordinary people” into question. A future direction would be to explore the involvement of younger people and BIPOC residents in nature-related activities.

It is also questionable whether board members and non-profit employees would be entirely representative of their organisations’ members, and whether both board members and employees could be considered nature lovers. Noting that board members of non-profit organisations are volunteers selected from the membership, they would likely be participants in the organisation’s outdoor activities. There was no reason to believe in advance that the employees were as nature-oriented as members would be. About half were communications professionals. Many employees, however, indicated an environmental focus to their post-secondary education, and all employees but one were worried about climate change. With the exception of the level of professionalism, there was no marked difference in responses between board members and employees. For these reasons, the term “nature lover” could apply to the vast majority of the people interviewed.

It would be fair to assume that there was some self-selection bias involved in who chose to participate in the interviews. Those who were Disengaged to Dismissive about climate change might have chosen not to respond. Hanson-Easey et al. noted this challenge regarding their focus groups10. My recruitment strategy was to invite people to an interview about “biodiversity loss and/or climate change,” thereby lessening the focus on climate change alone. Nonetheless, only one of the interviewees considered themselves Disengaged, and none were Doubtful or Dismissive about climate change, leaving a skewed population relative to the general public. However, it could be expected that nature lovers would constitute a somewhat biased sample in any case.

This research has received ethics review and approval by the Delegated Ethics Review Committee, which is delegated authority to review research ethics protocols by the Human Participants Review Committee at York University (Certificate # STU 2023-009). It conforms to the standards of the Canadian Tri-Council Policy Statement. All interviewees provided informed consent in advance of their interview.