As part of a class wide survey, our group went into downtown Portland and nearby neighborhoods to analyze public opinion on climate change in the Greater Portland Area. We asked random people a series of brief questions asking them to; quantify (1-10) how important climate change is to them compared to other issues and tell us their thoughts on climate change. Using demographic information provided by the subjects, we were able to organize and compare our class wide dataset to similar national results. Of all mean data extracted from the study, we found an overwhelming frequency of means of 7, thus, we deemed our project:
Lucky Number 7.
Data Collection
To begin our project, we split into two groups. Amy and Holden ventured downtown on Friday, January 27th, at around 1:00 pm. Julia went alone to the same area the next day. Both groups each ended up surveying 3 people, all around Pioneer Place. We randomly selected our survey participants, and those who were willing to participate received our polite introduction and questions. In the part of our group with 2 members, there was one student writing down as many verbatim quotes as possible, while the other entered the data directly into the survey form.
All groups involved in the survey followed the same essential protocol of electing random participants and keeping track of verbal responses.
Results
When we were comfortably back on campus, we set upon analyzing our entire class’ data using Excel. We sorted the data in terms of response numbers versus age, gender, race/ethnicity, and area of Portland. Using this data, we were able to average each category and compare it with similar surveys performed around our nation and around the world. Through this process, we discovered the following trends:
Figure 1: This is a graph showing the frequency of responses throughout the entire survey group. In total, 154 people were interviewed in this survey. It is clear that the majority lies in the upper/middle range of values 8-10 (high or extremely high) or 4-7 (moderate to high), with fewer responses falling at the lower end of the spectrum 1-3 (low to moderate).
Figure 2: In our data female responses (mean: 7.8) proved marginally higher than male (mean:7.7). The categories female and male had similar numbers of participants however the other/unsure category had only one participant.
Figure 3: Age distribution carried some of the more diverse responses from our results. Persons aged over 60 tended to have the highest concern of any test group (mean: 8.26), where the lowest concern fell with persons aged 30-60 (mean:7.18). Young people aged under 30 showed the middle range of concern (mean:7.81)
Figure 4: The mean amongst persons of different perceived ethnicities seemed fairly equal across the board. However it should be noted that a large number of participants were white (mean:6.95). The group which expressed the greatest mean concern was the Hispanic/Latino community (mean: 8.83).
Figure 5: This graphs shows the mean response value of people in different areas of PDX. Downtown values were taken closer to the city center while periphery vales were taken from areas surrounding the city. Downtown values (mean:7.7) were generally higher than periphery (mean:7.5).
Data Analysis
With access to the class dataset, we first sought to quantify the range of public opinion on climate change in the greater Portland area. To do so, we sorted the data into different demographic variables; gender, age, race and PDX location. For each variable comparison we calculated the mean response value (1-10) for each variable response. The mean response (where high values correspond to a high importance placed on climate change) values for females surveyed was 7.79, for males surveyed it was 7.72 (Figure 2). When sorted by age, the mean response value for people under 30 was 7.81, people between 30 and 60 7.18 and people over 60 8.26 (Figure 3). When comparing the survey results based on race, the mean response values were as follows; Asian 7.60, Black, 8.78, Hispanic 8.83, Native American 7.00, White 6.95 and Other 7.71 (Figure 4). When the data was divided based on the survey location, downtown Portland had a mean response value of 7.70, whereas the city’s periphery had a mean result of 7.50 (Figure 5).
Before this data can be accepted, there is a bias that needs to be addressed. During our survey introductions, we mentioned that we were students from an environmental studies class at Lewis & Clark College. As a well-known liberal college, the participants may have raised their instinctual answer by one or two numbers to conform to what they imagined we’d agree with.
National-Level Comparison
In order to see how Portlanders compare in their perception of climate change risks to those of the entire country, we analyzed the results of a 2010 study performed by the General Social Survey. When asked if they thought the global temperature rise associated with climate change was dangerous, 49% of national participants said that climate change was either “extremely or very dangerous”. Although not the exact same question, when asked to quantify how important climate change was to them (1-10), 60% of the Portlanders surveyed in our class study responded with scores of 8 or higher, corresponding with high or extremely high importance. Compared to national survey results, the Portlanders surveyed are more worried about climate change compared to the rest of the country.
International-Level Comparison
In order to analyze the distinction between our test’s results and those of the rest of the world, we analyzed data from a 2015 environmental public opinion study performed by the International Survey Programme in 2015. When asked how concerned with environmental issues they were, 57% of those surveyed (over 45,000 responses) responded by saying they were either of high or highest concern regarding environmental issues. Although the question asked during our survey was worded slightly differently, the responses are comparable to those of the international survey. 60% of the Portlanders surveyed in our class study placed high or extremely high importance on climate change. Thus the Portlanders studied demonstrated a higher importance for climate change issues than did the global population. This difference is noticeably smaller than it was between Portlanders and the rest of the country.
Our Ideas: Why Did They Disagree?
Comparisons within our own Portland dataset didn’t show major disagreement. There was substantial difference when the responses were sorted based on responder age. The 60 and older group had a mean response value over 1 point higher than that of the 30-60 age group. This was surprising to see initially, but we believe it could stem from this age group seeing the progression of the environmental movement over the last 50 or so years. The movement has gained significant legitimacy during that time, and any impacts that have been felt by climate change would be best interpreted by the older age group.
The higher mean response of Portlanders compared to the rest of the country makes a lot of sense when one considers the political climate of Portland. Portland is known as a democratic and liberal center, and because the majority of our class’ responses were gathered in downtown, the bias in our dataset is even higher because of these reasons (Figure 6). Compared to the rest of the world, Portland’s responses were pretty on-par with global averages. This is surprising given the aforementioned liberal reputation of the city. It appears that when placed next to other countries’ responses, those of our city are pretty similar. It appears that Portland’s opinion on climate change are not as extreme as we had initially thought.
Figure 6:
Concluding Thoughts
Adding our own small sample size to a class-wide dataset allowed us to analyze patterns of climate change opinion in Portland and compare these results to massive samples across the country and world. We first sorted our class-wide dataset based on a variety of demographic variables. We saw resounding similarity between most of these variables. We did however see that the over 60 age group had a mean response of over one whole point higher than the 30-60 age demographic. When the dataset was sorted by race, hispanic and black survey subjects had a mean response over 1.5 points higher than that of white responders. We speculate this could result from cultural differences regarding climate change as suggested during our Skype interview with Mike Hulme. Other than those disparities, the vast majority of our intra-dataset comparisons were almost identical.
In comparison to similar national surveys, we saw that Portlanders placed a higher priority on climate change than did the rest of the country. This is something we expected to see, as Portland has a reputation for being a liberal hub. In comparison with similar surveys from around the world, we saw that Portlanders responded similarly to the rest of the world when answering questions asking the importance of climate change. This was somewhat surprising, given the reputation that Portland has in the U.S. it was interesting to see how similar our Portland results were to the rest of the world. Maybe our ideas on climate change aren’t that extreme after all.