Natural Resources Program, Department of Forestry & Environmental Resources, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, United States of America.
Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Program, Forestry and Environmental Resources, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2019 Jan 4;14(1):e0210149. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0210149. eCollection 2019.
Education may encourage personal and collective responses to climate change, but climate education has proven surprisingly difficult and complex. Self-perception of knowledge and intelligence represent one factor that may impact willingness to learn about climate change. We explored this possibility with a case study in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2015 (n = 200). Our goal was to test how gender and ethnicity influenced perceptions people had of their own climate change knowledge. Survey respondents were asked how strongly they agreed with the statement "I feel knowledgeable about climate change" (1 = strongly disagree, and 5 = strongly agree). Our survey instrument also included demographic questions about race, age, income, gender, and education, as well as respondent's experience with natural disasters and drought. We observed an interaction between education and gender where women's self-perceived knowledge was higher than men among people with low levels of educational attainment, but was higher for men than women among people with high levels of educational attainment. In addition, minority respondents self-reported lower perceived climate change knowledge than white respondents, regardless of educational attainment. This study enhances our understanding of the gender gap in self-perceptions of climate knowledge by suggesting it is contingent on educational attainment. This could be the result of stereotype-threat experienced by women and minorities, and exacerbated by educational systems. Because people who question their knowledge are often more able to learn, particularly in ideologically charged contexts, highly educated women and minorities may be more successful learning about climate change than white men.
教育可以鼓励个人和集体对气候变化做出回应，但气候教育却被证明是非常困难和复杂的。自我感知的知识和智力是可能影响人们学习气候变化意愿的一个因素。我们在 2015 年北卡罗来纳州罗利市进行了一项案例研究，对这一可能性进行了探索（n=200）。我们的目标是检验性别和种族如何影响人们对自己气候变化知识的看法。调查对象被要求对“我对气候变化有一定了解”这一说法表示强烈同意的程度（1=强烈不同意，5=强烈同意）。我们的调查工具还包括关于种族、年龄、收入、性别和教育程度的人口统计问题，以及受访者对自然灾害和干旱的经历。我们观察到教育和性别之间存在一种相互作用，在教育程度较低的人群中，女性的自我感知知识高于男性，但在教育程度较高的人群中，男性的自我感知知识高于女性。此外，无论教育程度如何，少数族裔受访者自我报告的气候变化感知知识都低于白人受访者。这项研究通过表明这取决于教育程度，增强了我们对自我感知的气候变化知识中的性别差距的理解。这可能是女性和少数族裔经历刻板印象威胁的结果，并因教育系统而加剧。因为质疑自己知识的人往往更容易学习，尤其是在意识形态强烈的背景下，受过高等教育的女性和少数族裔可能比白人男性更成功地学习气候变化知识。
