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My new research with @EnvPolicyCenter and Michelle Hummel has just been published in Global Environmental Change. We show how local risk messaging can sometimes REDUCE climate concerns. Our research troubles how we currently communicate climate risks... 1/ sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
We ran a large-n survey experiment in the San Francisco Bay Area. We showed respondents local zip-code level maps of sea-level rise under a series of climate-change linked flooding scenarios. Here is an example map: 2/ 
The assumption many make: local risk messages will make climate change more salient and drive public concern. This is the idea behind sea-level rise tools such as Climate Central's Surging Seas tool: sealevel.climatecentral.org. But is local risk communication always better? 3/
Work by @adrianbruegger and others have shown how humans approach climate risk decision-making differently depending on whether risks are conceived as abstract "distant" risks or concrete "proximate" risks. 4/
What we find in this new article: showing Bay-area residents local flooding maps reduces concern about sea-level rise. This effect is entirely concentrated among individuals who believe in climate change. 5/
Local flooding maps makes these individuals less worried! The take-home: We need to pay attention to how we communicate local risks. And we need more empirical work to understand what types of local risk messaging work. Read more about our research: sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
