Climate Change in Sociocultural Contexts: One Risk, Multiple Threats

Climate change is one of the main risks humanity faces this century. Numerous studies in social sciences show that people have a biased understanding of scientific knowledge regarding climate change and, consequently, do not adopt the good practices. We consider the concept of threat helpful to understand why this is so. Indeed, it integrates cognitive, emotional and social dimensions in order to better understand how the public understand and cope with climate change issues. In this chapter, we present three studies about the public’s perceptions of and reactions to climate change in France and in Germany that illustrate how one and the same phenomenon (climate change) is differently construed as a threat (i.e., socially, cognitively and emotionally) in two cultural contexts (France and Germany). Moreover, these three studies vary in their analysis levels of the phenomenon: from macro-social to micro-social contexts (i.e., in the media, in interacting groups, in private) highlighting that threat needs a multilevel approach.