Investigating the Relationship Between Environmental Values and Public Perceptions of Geoengineering Technologies

[Geoengineering News]

https://routesjournal.org/2025/05/24/kalani-foster/

Authors

By Kalani Foster

Abstract

Environmental values act as a focal point for the evaluation of new policies, actions, and groups, particularly concerning emergent attitude objects, as values provide a stable and enduring basis for attitude formation. However, literature has not yet analysed the impact of environmental values on attitude formation around geoengineering perceptions. This study utilised an online questionnaire of UK publics to connect environmental values as measured through the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) and its subthemes to perceptions of geoengineering, carbon dioxide removal, and solar radiation modification. Results indicate that, as a whole, environmental values do not consistently underpin support for geoengineering research and deployment except the eco-crisis subtheme. Instead, geoengineering represented an impending climate crisis among those with a higher NEP score in which less trust was placed in policymakers, and concern for this crisis eventually overruled concern for geoengineering’s under-researched implications. Future work should study how beliefs regarding climate urgency impact public perceptions of geoengineering.

Source: Routes Journal