According to a recent report from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, since 2008, approximately 25% percent of U.S. consumers have either rewarded or punished companies for those companies’ actions related to climate change. The report, “Americans’ Actions to Limit Global Warming in September 2012” (available online), indicates that a significant portion of the consumer market continues to care about the position of companies on climate change. The report also concludes that individuals who have not used purchasing power to either reward or punish companies in the past year plan to increase personal acts of consumer activism in the next year.
The report indicates that in the 12 months leading up to the September 2012 survey, about one in three adults rewarded a company that took steps to reduce emissions. In addition to rewarding companies for taking actions to reduce climate change impacts, 24% of those surveyed in September 2012 indicated that they had at some point in the past year chosen not to purchase products by companies that oppose steps to reduce climate change.
When asked to contemplate future behavior, 52% of individuals surveyed expressed the intent to either reward or punish companies sometime in the next year for the companies’ action or inaction to reduce climate change. Since researchers from Yale and George Mason began collecting data four years ago, slightly more than half of Americans have consistently reported plans to use purchasing power to either reward or punish companies. In November 2008, consumers indicated the greatest willingness (58%) to either buy or not buy based on a company’s actions on climate change. In the economic recession of 2010, willingness to utilize purchasing power to support global warming action fell to 51%. Since then, consumer support for utilizing purchasing power has remained at just over half of the surveyed American adults.
The Yale and George Mason researchers also studied three other prongs of climate actions by citizens: (1) saving energy, (2) citizen behavior, and (3) communication behavior. Even though a majority of American adults report that they always or often set their thermostats below 68 degrees and take other actions like replacing traditional light bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs, the researchers noted a decline in Americans’ belief that certain energy-saving actions can reduce climate change. Americans are less confident today than four years ago that their individual actions will reduce their contribution to climate change. While Americans may be less optimistic about their individual impact on global warming, the report’s authors observed that a growing number of Americans say they contacted a government official in the past year to support mitigation of climate change. In the next year, the report indicates that more Americans intend to urge government officials to take action on climate change.
Overall, the Yale and George Mason polling data indicate that Americans continue to be concerned about global warming and are willing to use political and consumer activism to push for action on global warming.