Procedure:
Our team of three students, Kurt Barbara, Jordan McLuckie and Isabelle Russenberger, surveyed various areas of the Portland Downtown Metro Area. We approached city-goers on the street to ask them to take a short survey on their thoughts on Climate change, and how they would rate it in terms of level of importance on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being least important compared to other current issues, and 10 being most important. We compiled our survey results in a mass database with the rest of the ENVS 160 class, and used this collective data to draw our conclusions.
With our survey data, we created graphs to analyze the different variables within our survey subjects such as perceived gender, age, and race. We compared these findings with data gathered from Pew Research Center and the International Social Survey Programme. Our findings can be found detailed below.
Data Analysis:
In this survey, the average importance of climate change in PDX downtown and periphery totaled 7.7. This value illustrates that citizens are concerned, but not to the point that they all view it as top priority.
Overall, no individual in this survey valued climate change as the least important issue (giving it a 1). This shows that, in the Portland area there are is at least some concern from everyone and nobody believes that it is a nonexistent issue. This is supported by the left skewness of the histogram below, where a larger concentration of results are 8,9, and 10.
On a smaller scale, the average importance when separated by race shows a general consensus based, similar to that of the overall average, ranging from 6.2 to 8.2. While the sample sizes of each race are all relatively small (therefore increasing chances of variability), each race shows a moderate concern. A concern when comparing race is that the collection of white participants includes 97 individuals, while all of the other races have below ten participants. By the law of large numbers, the larger a sample size, the closer the results will be to the true mean. This means that the low sample sizes could be very poor representations of the climate change importance.
Mirroring the total average importance of climate change by gender reveals no discrepancy between male and female survey participants with an average of 7.7 for both. Since there is only one response with an “unsure” gender, this value has little influence on the total, despite it being a lower value.
Issues could arise from using the experimenter’s perception of gender, as any portion of the demographic could identify with a gender different from what is assumed by the experimenter. This survey also leaves out all persons identifying as non-binary (they/them pronouns).
Averages in age demographic are not different from those seen, with age categories ranging from 7.3 to 8.2. From this data, it is shown that participants over 60 and under 30 find climate change more pressing than 30-60 year old participants. This shows that Generation X and some Millennials show less concern for climate change issues, while Generation Z, Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation may be more invested in climate change.
The is very little difference between survey location in the Portland area. Periphery shows an average slightly lower than downtown. This .3 different could be a result of a variety of causes, including tourism, difference in occupations, students studying in downtown Portland, or this difference may be also related with political views, as outer Portland is shown to have voted more conservatively than the downtown area.
Hypotheses As To Range of Data:
According to the data gathered in this survey and the comments therein, and supported by data from the International Social Survey Programme and Pew Research Center, I suspect that the range of opinion on climate change is due to three main factors:
- People don’t feel that climate change is as big of an issue as other pressing daily concerns
- Some people who were previously on the fence or distant from the climate change issue are now especially concerned due to the rise of the current administration, in particular the concern over Trump’s policies
- Generation and location of living
Because Climate Change is not an immediate, visual cause-and-effect issue, it is difficult for people with more immediate concerns to have the mental space to worry about climate change. For example, a perceived white male over 60 stated that, “I have 2 daughters, and with all that’s happening right now with women’s rights, climate change falls pretty far down on the list . . .” A perceived female under 30, though she rated climate change an 8, wanted to add that, “I think climate change is very important but I believe there are other issues that are more important like health care, equality, and poverty.” It is a luxury to be able to be concerned about climate change — it means that you aren’t necessarily homeless, unemployed, have poor education or water quality, and a million other issues affecting people immediately every day. This is an important point to remember when analyzing the data. Data from the International Social Survey Programme also supports this, with many survey-takers labeling other present day issues as more important that climate change.
Moreover, the Pew Research Center findings showed that Climate Change ranked number four again on items second most important to the country, which suggests that the issue is not even near the top on most people’s lists.
One can see here, however, that on issues directly affecting individual families, climate change ranked 7th, a number which I would predict would change based on the country — back to survey takers’ economic and emotional ability to be able to worry about climate change.
Another reason for the range in concern is the increased discussion since the election of Donald Trump and some of the people he has nominated to appoint to key departments. Now that Trump is president, many people are concerned about the future. This perceived over 60 female told us that, “We’re pretty screwed because of Donald Trump. He’s gutting the EPA.”
Finally, age averages show a difference in how opinionated people are on climate change. The age group who ranked highest was the >60 generation, which could be justified because that group has lived long enough to watch climate change unfold — it’s a multi-decade process, and they’ve lived 60 of them. The second highest prioritizing generation was <30. One could argue that this is due to younger generations always being the more liberal — they are surrounded by a flurry of climate change commentary, so it is a present problem in their lives. Additionally, they are burdened with the future of a warmer climate, so they may be more motivated to help prevent that. The age group 30-60 had the least amount of concern for climate change. I would argue that this is because this group is neither old enough to see climate change unfold before their eyes nor young enough to feel like it’s their problem in particular.
An overall wide range of opinion on Climate Change is also supported by the Pew Research Center database, which shows that to most people, Climate Change matters “A great deal” or “somewhat” to them personally. However, up to 26% percent of survey takers felt that it didn’t matter too much to them.
Group Conclusion About Survey Experience:
As a group, we were not surprised with the fact that most people we surveyed showed a strong concern for the environment. Portland is deemed to be a sustainable city, more so than a lot of other major US cities. Portland has plenty of organizations that put sustainability at the forefront of their mission such as 350.pdx and Portland Rising Tide. Other than strictly environmental organizations, most local businesses attempt to be as environmentally friendly as possible. The City of Portland also supports recycling and composting for households, with promotions titled “Portland Recycles!” and “Portland Composts!” which encourage a more green and earth friendly lifestyle.