PhD Ceremony A.M. (Anne) van Valkengoed, MSc. Reality, causes, consequences: the role of climate change perceptions in climate adaptation.

The climate on Earth is changing. Extreme weather events will occur more frequently and become more severe. Individuals and households need to engage in a wide repertoire of actions to adapt to these risks, ranging from supporting adaptation policies, to seeking information about climate-related risks, to implementing preparative measures in and around the home. In this dissertation, we examine whether people’s perceptions of the reality, causes, and consequences of climate change are general antecedents of these different adaptation actions. Across four chapters, we find that climate change perceptions can encourage different adaptation action, particularly information seeking and policy support.Yet, climate change perceptions are not a silver bullet to promoting any type of adaptation action. It is also important that people perceive risks from specific climate-related hazards, that they perceive themselves as capable of implementing adaptation behaviours, and that they perceive adaptation behaviours as effective. Policies that consider both climate change perceptions as well as more hazard- and behaviour-specific variables such as risk perception and efficacy beliefs are therefore critical in promoting widespread adaptation.

Dissertation: http://hdl.handle.net/(...)52-9bb8-6e754bc55d43