Descriptive social norms, social support, and behavioral response to climate-related and co-occurring health hazards

Abstract

Climate-related health hazards pose grave risks to human health and well-being. Individual-level behavioral response is critical given increasingly severe climate-related health hazards, such as wildfire smoke, co-occurring with other health hazards, such as COVID-19. Existing models of behavior traditionally focus on the role of threat and efficacy appraisals; however, social factors, such as social norms and social support, are also of interest to scholars and policymakers. We examine how threat and efficacy appraisal, along with descriptive social norms and social support, are related to behavioral intentions in response to wildfire smoke and COVID-19. Using survey data from a nationally representative sample (n = 502), when wildfire smoke and COVID-19 were active health threats – we found threat and efficacy appraisal were positively associated with behavioral intentions. We also found that descriptive social norms were correlated with intended response, and cognitive appraisals may mediate the effect of such norms on behavioral intentions. Social support negatively moderated the relationship between response efficacy and threat appraisal, respectively, on behavioral intentions; however, we found no evidence of social support moderating the relationship between self-efficacy and behavioral intentions. Thus social factors should be considered with cognitive appraisals when examining factors motivating behavioral response to climate-related health hazards. Behavioral interventions and public health communications leveraging descriptive social norms may promote adaptation to various threat types, directly and through perceptions of threat and efficacy.

Keywords:

• Wildfire smoke
• descriptive social norms
• social support
• threat and efficacy appraisal
• behavioral response

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge Jon Krosnick and Bo MacInnis for permission to use survey data collected with Resources for the Future, study 2 data collection funding, and survey question development feedback. We also thank Matt Berent for study 2 data collection assistance. Additionally, we thank Nina Berlin Rubin and the Behavioral Decisions and Environment lab for feedback and support.

Disclosure statement

Authors have no relevant financial or non-financial competing interests to report.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available upon reasonable request.

Notes

1 To replicate results found in the representative sample, we also fielded a convenience sample (n = 1486) of U.S. adults in August 2020. We report procedures and results of this second study in Appendix C.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Stanford School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences and the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.