I use the World Risk Poll data, which includes information on whether respondents have personally experienced a climate-related hazard in the last five years, whether they perceive climate change as a threat to their country, and a multidimensional resilience indicator. www.lrfoundation.org.uk/wrp

I leverage this data source to assess whether experience with different hazards is associated with increased climate risk perception. The individual-level effects are consistent and, for some hazards, comparable to having a university degree! Effects at the country level are small & uncertain

The distinction between individual-level effects & country-level patterns is critical. A recent global study found that country average exposure was not related to policy support, similar to what I found here with risk perception. But individual exposure still matters! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I use hierarchical Bayesian multinomial regression modeling, which allows me to investigate what level of risk perception is different for people with hazard experience. Importantly, people with hazard experience tend to view climate change as a very serious threat, not just a somewhat serious one!

The data also includes a resilience index defined at the individual level, combining individual, household, community, and societal resilience factors: www.lrfoundation.org.uk/wrp/world-ri... Risk perceptions do not seem to change differently for people with low or high resilience.

There is marked variation between countries, and this appears to differ across hazards. For example, hurricanes, mudslides, and wildfires show similar effects across countries, while the effects of earthquakes, sandstorms, and droughts vary strongly across countries.

While there are a number of limitations to this analysis, which I discuss in the paper, these findings provide robust global evidence that personal experience with climate-related hazards is associated with increased climate risk perception. Read it all here: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...