Pope Francis the Roman Catholic Church and citizen attitudes towards climate change in Latin America
Abstract Studies on the relationship between religious attitudes and attitudes towards climate change and other environmental issues have tended to focus on the United States. While there is good reason to expect such a relationship to exist, our understanding of it is limited first and foremost by...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Nature Portfolio
2024-04-01
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| Series: | npj Climate Action |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-024-00109-1 |
| _version_ | 1797209003999100928 |
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| author | Alejandro Ecker Friederike Nüssel Jale Tosun |
| author_facet | Alejandro Ecker Friederike Nüssel Jale Tosun |
| author_sort | Alejandro Ecker |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Abstract Studies on the relationship between religious attitudes and attitudes towards climate change and other environmental issues have tended to focus on the United States. While there is good reason to expect such a relationship to exist, our understanding of it is limited first and foremost by the limited number of country-comparative studies. This study aims to reduce this gap by investigating how trust in the Church and evaluations of Pope Francis affect the views of Latin Americans on anthropogenic climate change. Our study is based on data from the 2017 Latinobarómetro with 13,472 respondents based in 18 Latin American countries. Our findings reveal that Roman Catholics are less likely to believe in manmade climate change as compared to evangelical Christians and respondents belonging to no or any other denomination. We obtain the same negative relationship between trust in the (Catholic) Church and belief in anthropogenic climate change. However, favourable assessments of Pope Francis have a positive effect, and this assessment also has a positive moderating effect on the impact of trust in the Church on the outcome variable. These findings have important implications for climate policies, as they suggest that the public demand for climate action might increase if the Roman Catholic Church in their regional dioceses, rather than mostly the Pope, were to take and communicate a more coherent, affirmative position on climate change. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-24T09:47:48Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-800feb97fc6848e2b80f6ebef46f79e0 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2731-9814 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-24T09:47:48Z |
| publishDate | 2024-04-01 |
| publisher | Nature Portfolio |
| record_format | Article |
| series | npj Climate Action |
| spelling | doaj.art-800feb97fc6848e2b80f6ebef46f79e02024-04-14T11:32:57ZengNature Portfolionpj Climate Action2731-98142024-04-013111010.1038/s44168-024-00109-1Pope Francis the Roman Catholic Church and citizen attitudes towards climate change in Latin AmericaAlejandro Ecker0Friederike Nüssel1Jale Tosun2Heidelberg Center for Ibero-American Studies, Heidelberg UniversityEcumenical Institute, Heidelberg UniversityInstitute of Political Science, Heidelberg UniversityAbstract Studies on the relationship between religious attitudes and attitudes towards climate change and other environmental issues have tended to focus on the United States. While there is good reason to expect such a relationship to exist, our understanding of it is limited first and foremost by the limited number of country-comparative studies. This study aims to reduce this gap by investigating how trust in the Church and evaluations of Pope Francis affect the views of Latin Americans on anthropogenic climate change. Our study is based on data from the 2017 Latinobarómetro with 13,472 respondents based in 18 Latin American countries. Our findings reveal that Roman Catholics are less likely to believe in manmade climate change as compared to evangelical Christians and respondents belonging to no or any other denomination. We obtain the same negative relationship between trust in the (Catholic) Church and belief in anthropogenic climate change. However, favourable assessments of Pope Francis have a positive effect, and this assessment also has a positive moderating effect on the impact of trust in the Church on the outcome variable. These findings have important implications for climate policies, as they suggest that the public demand for climate action might increase if the Roman Catholic Church in their regional dioceses, rather than mostly the Pope, were to take and communicate a more coherent, affirmative position on climate change.https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-024-00109-1 |
| spellingShingle | Alejandro Ecker Friederike Nüssel Jale Tosun Pope Francis the Roman Catholic Church and citizen attitudes towards climate change in Latin America npj Climate Action |
| title | Pope Francis the Roman Catholic Church and citizen attitudes towards climate change in Latin America |
| title_full | Pope Francis the Roman Catholic Church and citizen attitudes towards climate change in Latin America |
| title_fullStr | Pope Francis the Roman Catholic Church and citizen attitudes towards climate change in Latin America |
| title_full_unstemmed | Pope Francis the Roman Catholic Church and citizen attitudes towards climate change in Latin America |
| title_short | Pope Francis the Roman Catholic Church and citizen attitudes towards climate change in Latin America |
| title_sort | pope francis the roman catholic church and citizen attitudes towards climate change in latin america |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-024-00109-1 |
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