Procedure:
Our team consists of Emma Hay, Justin Wilson, Sophie Henry and Jesse McDermott-Hughes. To collect data, we took the Pio to Pioneer Square in downtown PDX and approached various people surveying public opinion regarding the importance Climate Change. We asked them to rank how important Climate Change was to them personally, compared to other global issues on a scale of 1-10 (1 being low importance and 10 being most). We then asked them to expand on their reasoning, noted their responses and collected their zip code. Once they left we determined their apparent gender, age and ethnicity and any other observations. A week later, we analyzed the data we collected combined with our classmates, created graphs and them compared results to the national averages.
Portland Survey Analysis:
We found that of the people we surveyed in Portland, 76% of the 165, ranked Climate Change as one of their top four priorities compared with other global issues. Although our results show that men ranked Climate Change as 0.2% more important than women, this data is not statistically significant, given our sample size, location range and potential bias. We previously assumed that people surveyed in the surrounding Portland area might view climate change as less important than those downtown Portland due to differing political backgrounds and those status given the Trump vs. Clinton Political Map. However, the difference we found did not show a signifiant enough difference between the two. We additionally established that people under 30 and over 60 had the most open concern for the environment. Considering there were very few people over 60 surveyed, this may not be socioeconomic, but a possibility of the results being due to the older generation’s wider observations of environmental changes over the years. Portland is full of young environmentalists and Donald Trump’s recent election may have caused the younger generation to push environmental issues up to the top of their importance list. Individuals between ages 30 and 60 appeared to place social justice, economic and poverty issues higher on their lists than that of Climate Change, perhaps because of a focus on current issues where dramatic effects are directly seen by US citizens of instead of those that are not as apparent. Lastly, the diversity ratio is not an accurate representation of the whole of the Portland area. Of the 157 people that were interviewed, 122 of them were perceived as white while only 35 where either hispanic, black, asian or uncertain/mixed.
National Survey Analysis:
When looking at National surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center asking questions of Climate Change importance, results showed that across the US, Americans say they consider changes in the environment ‘a very big problem’ or ‘a great deal’.
A survey conducted by Abt SRBI, on October 25 – November 8, 2016, collected 4,265 online interviews asking the question, “How much of a problem do you think climate change is in the country today?…A very big problem, a moderately big problem, a small problem, or not a problem at all”, which yielded some pretty interesting results. Given that this question was asked in a larger scale and that those surveyed were asked other questions as to their perceived importance of various issues, the findings suggest that this is an issue on a national scale. 65% of those polled answered that Climate Change was either a very big problem, or a moderately big problem; answers that would probably equate to approximately 7-8 or above on the same scale used in the Portland survey. About 76% of those interviewed in Portland listed the importance of climate to be a 7 or above, leading us to think the difference between the National Results and the Portland results is not large. However, Portlanders do tend to show more concern on the issue that the U.S. as a whole.
In contrast, another survey poll found that when asked the question, “How much do you, personally, care about the issue of global climate change” without the comparison of it to other issues, Americans consider Climate Change as a less significant issue than Portlanders do. While only 36% of Americans said they cared a great deal about climate change, 64% of Portlanders ranked climate change an 8 or higher, in terms of importance, on a scale of (1-10). 8% of Americans said they did not care at all about climate change, whereas no Portlanders ranked climate change at 1. This difference between national data and our Portland data, is most likely due to the liberal nature of Portland relative to the rest of nation. However, it could also be in part due to the difference in wording of the surveys. Our survey asks people to rank the importance of climate on a scale from 1-10. People may be more inclined to say that climate change is important than they are to say that they care personally about climate change.
International Survey Analysis:
Compared to international data collected by Pew Research Center about how much people personally care about Climate Change, it seems like Portland contains a higher percentage of people that believe it is a serious issue than is estimated of the world’s population. According to a survey done by FactTank in Spring of 2015, of 40 different nations polled around the world only 54% of people think climate change is a serious issue. In Portland, 64% of people rate the threat of climate change as an 8 or higher. This is probably due to the demographic that Portland attracts. Many people living in Portland, especially in the areas where people were surveyed, express concern for the environment. Internationally, countries with the highest per-capita levels of CO2 emissions are less concerned about climate change. Although Portland has a relatively high level of per-capita CO2 emissions, they have less than other cities due to environmentally concerned citizens who chose to use more sustainable modes of transportation, yet Portland still has a higher percentage of concerned citizens.
Conclusion:
When conducting this survey, we found it surprising that the greatest amount of Portlanders not only ranked it significantly important, but as a complete 10. This could have been due to social desirability bias which would make individuals exaggerate their true concern just slightly. We also found it surprising that the Portland results were not as far as from the National results than we thought. Although, this could have been due to the variability in how all the questions were framed differently. We discovered a range in opinion when it comes to Climate Change because of differing theologies of the environment, religions, economic status’, risk assessment, location, ethnicity, upbringing, age… the list is endless. It seems like the more developed countries not directly feeling the impacts of Climate Change because of their higher socioeconomic status’, seem to not feel like it’s a huge importance. However, found from our survey in Portland, it seems like the debate on Climate Change is swayed more towards the side of large concern and importance.