Climate change and adaptive decision making: Responses from North Carolina coastal officials

While climate change is a global phenomenon, adaptive action starts at the local level. Understanding how local decision makers make sense of climate change and the decision to adapt or not is imperative for advancing action on climate change. This article advances the scholarship on local decision making about adaptive action through a study of North Carolina (NC) coastal communities that face an assortment of threats from climate change. During March and April of 2014, 283 officials were surveyed across the 20 NC coastal counties to explore their willingness to take adaptive action (WTAA). The study utilized five risk scenarios to probe officials’ knowledge about climate change, whether they perceived climate change as a threat to their community, and their political ideology. Findings indicated an officials’ professed knowledge of climate change was not associated with WTAA. Officials who perceived climate change as a threat to their community were largely more WTAA. However, when the perceived threat was identified as uncertain, no significant relationships were identified. Findings for political ideology and WTAA indicated no significant differences under a low level of risk, yet under an average level of risk and an uncertain level of risk moderates were more WTAA than conservatives. Under higher than average and very high levels of risk moderates were more WTAA than both liberals and conservatives.

Duke Scholars

Author Toddi Steelman Environmental Sciences and Policy