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Factors affecting climate change concern in Pakistan: are there rural/urban differences?

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Abstract

There is a growing interest in studying the determinants of climate change concern, but there are few studies conducted on developing countries like Pakistan. This study has three objectives. Firstly, to find whether there are differences in climate change concern levels between Pakistani citizens residing in rural and urban areas. Secondly, whether climate change concern is influenced by the same or different factors in rural and urban areas. Finally, whether the religious denomination one adheres to plays a role. The 2015 database provided by Pew Research Center, a representative sample of the Pakistani population, is used, and ordered logit models are run by including the independent variables in steps. The main finding is that the place of residency matters: rural residents show higher levels of concern than their urban counterparts. Climate change concern is influenced in both areas of residence by the gender of the respondent: females are more concerned than males. Nonetheless, there are differences in other determinants of climate change concern in rural and urban areas, for example, the education level, which affects mainly rural citizens. The religious denomination affects the concern of rural residents: Sunni Muslims show higher levels of climate change concern than Shi’a Muslims. Recommendations include the implementation of policies aiming to increase the education level in rural areas and the incorporation of courses and curricular or extra-curricular activities that would promote more concern among high school students.

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Data availability

The raw data is available at the following webpage: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2015/06/23/spring-2015-survey/. The dataset analysed during the current study is available from the corresponding author on request.

Notes

  1. The New Environmental Paradigm Scale, developed by Dunlap and Van Liere (1978) and modified by Dunlap et al. (2000), is the most used measure of environmental concern worldwide (Yu 2014). This measure, based on 15 survey questions, captures different aspects of environmental attitudes: “the reality of limits to growth, antianthropocentrism, the fragility of nature’s balance, rejection of exemptionalism and the possibility of an ecocrisis” (Dunlap et al. 2000, p.432).

  2. Ergun and Rivas (2019) found that married, divorced, or widowed people show less CCC than single people.

  3. The 2015 Global Attitudes Survey is the latest survey that includes Pakistan.

  4. The database can be downloaded from https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2015/06/23/spring-2015-survey/.

  5. For respondents who said that “climate change does not exist” (in Q41 and Q42), the answer was categorized as the lowest level of concern, i.e., it was considered as “Will never harm people” in Q41 and as “Not at all concerned” in Q42.

  6. Even though the effect of the variable Gender will be analyzed jointly with the other social roles variables, it is included as a control variable in all the models.

  7. Only 35 respondents (4% of the sample) are non-Muslim: 3% Hinduists and 1% Christians.

  8. See https://cleangreen.gov.pk for more detail.

  9. See www.mocc.gov.pk for more detail.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Economics Program, Middle East Technical University – Northern Cyprus Campus, Kalkanli, 99738, Guzelyurt, North Cyprus, Turkey

    Selim Jürgen Ergun, Muhammad Umar Khan & Maria Fernanda Rivas

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  1. Selim Jürgen Ergun
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  2. Muhammad Umar Khan
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  3. Maria Fernanda Rivas
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Contributions

S.J.E, M.U.K., and M.F.R. defined the research idea. M.F.R. was in charge of the data analysis. S.J.E, M.U.K., and M.F.R. wrote the manuscript. The total contribution of each author to the manuscript was very similar.

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Correspondence to Maria Fernanda Rivas.

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Appendix

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Table 6 Provincial statistics
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Table 7 Descriptive statistics of the dependent and independent variables—rural areas
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Table 8 Descriptive statistics of the dependent and independent variables—urban areas
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Ergun, S.J., Khan, M.U. & Rivas, M.F. Factors affecting climate change concern in Pakistan: are there rural/urban differences?. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 34553–34569 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-13082-7

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