2025 Spring Seminar Series Seminar: Geoboo Song University of Arkansas

The Politics of Climate Change in the American Heartland

Abstract: This talk presents new findings from the Arkansas Climate Change Opinion Survey, a multi-wave, statewide public opinion survey investigating how cultural worldviews and emotionally charged imagery shape attitudes toward climate change and related policy preferences, particularly in the context of K-12 science education. Grounded in Grid-Group Cultural Theory, the analysis explores how different cultural orientations – egalitarianism, individualism, hierarchism, and fatalism – influence both the affective images individuals associate with climate change and their support for school curricula emphasizing human-caused climate change education. Using a combination of structural topic modeling, regression analysis, and causal mediation analysis, the study identifies the pathways through which deeply held cultural beliefs and emotional responses shape climate literacy policy support. The findings contribute to our understanding of the sociocultural barriers to climate education and offer actionable insights for crafting persuasive climate policy narratives in conservative and rural contexts.