A Value-Based Topography of Climate Change Beliefs and Behaviors

Existing literature has documented the role of moral values in predicting climate attitudes and actions, but predominantly at the individual level. This approach, though insightful, has two limitations: Firstly, it ignores the region-specific nature of green decision-making in the real world. In reality, green decisions are contingent on a multifarious blend of local factors (e.g., urban planning and state-level regulations) that collectively modulate the expression of one’s moral values into actionable green behaviors. Secondly, climate interventions often target social structures, not individuals, and effective community-targeted interventions require nuanced, community-centric insights. Across two studies, we use advanced Bayesian geospatial modeling to examine how county-level moral values can predict green attitudes and real-world household carbon emissions after controlling for political behavior and important region-specific factors (e.g., temperature and precipitation anomalies, population density). We find that moral norms across 3,102 US counties in 48 states explain a significant portion of the variance in both green attitudes and household carbon emissions. Our results reveal that counties where purity and fairness norms prevail exhibit heightened green concerns and reduced carbon emissions. Conversely, counties with predominant authority norms display diminished green concerns and increased emissions. Moreover, the political leaning of a county is the strongest predictor of green attitudes. However, when it comes to taking carbon footprints, moral values have a greater influence than political affiliations. Our community-level findings have critical implications for the moral psychology of climate change, which can help design region-specific strategies.