No cool dudes in Austria: Determinants of Austrian climate change skepticism

Abstract

In the United States, conservative white men are demonstrably more skeptical about climate change than other adults, earning them the label “Cool Dudes.” Cool Dudes who self-reported understand climate change very well (i.e., high subjective climate literacy) are particularly skeptical about it. We investigated the existence of a similar effect in Austria using a representative survey study (N = 2185). We measured and regressed climate change skepticism on participants' gender, age, education, political orientation, self-reported knowledge of climate change, and subjective climate literacy. We found no evidence of a Cool Dude-like pattern in Austria. Men were not significantly more climate-skeptical than women, regardless of their political orientation. Nevertheless, climate skeptics were older, more conservative, and less educated and more often stated that they were not well-informed about climate change. High subjective climate literacy was associated with higher skepticism about climate change among conservatives yet lower skepticism among liberals. High subjective climate literacy was also associated with higher skepticism among those not informed about climate change. These results underline the importance of political orientation, information seeking, and subjective climate literacy, but not gender, for predicting climate change skepticism in Austria.