Behavioural frameworks to understand public perceptions of and risk response to carbon dioxide removal

Trisha R Shrum; Ezra Markowitz; Holly Buck; Robin Gregory; Sander van der Linden; Shahzeen Z Attari; Leaf Van Boven

doi:10.1098/rsfs.2020.0002

Behavioural frameworks to understand public perceptions of and risk response to carbon dioxide removal

Interface Focus. 2020 Oct 6;10(5):20200002. doi: 10.1098/rsfs.2020.0002. Epub 2020 Aug 14.

Authors

Trisha R Shrum¹, Ezra Markowitz², Holly Buck³, Robin Gregory⁴, Sander van der Linden⁵, Shahzeen Z Attari⁶, Leaf Van Boven⁷

Affiliations

¹ Department of Community Development and Applied Economics, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA.
² Department of Environmental Conservation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA.
³ Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and School of Law, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
⁴ Decision Research, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
⁵ Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
⁶ O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA.
⁷ Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA.

Abstract

The adoption of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies at a scale sufficient to draw down carbon emissions will require both individual and collective decisions that happen over time in different locations to enable a massive scale-up. Members of the public and other decision-makers have not yet formed strong attitudes, beliefs and preferences about most of the individual CDR technologies or taken positions on policy mechanisms and tax-payer support for CDR. Much of the current discourse among scientists, policy analysts and policy-makers about CDR implicitly assumes that decision-makers will exhibit unbiased, rational behaviour that weighs the costs and benefits of CDR. In this paper, we review behavioural decision theory and discuss how public reactions to CDR will be different from and more complex than that implied by rational choice theory. Given that people do not form attitudes and opinions in a vacuum, we outline how fundamental social normative principles shape important intergroup, intragroup and social network processes that influence support for or opposition to CDR technologies. We also point to key insights that may help stakeholders craft public outreach strategies that anticipate the nuances of how people evaluate the risks and benefits of CDR approaches. Finally, we outline critical research questions to understand the behavioural components of CDR to plan for an emerging public response.

Keywords: behavioural science; mitigation technologies; risk perception; social processes.

Publication types

Review