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Published August 20, 2025 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Growing climate change risk concerns with rising regional disparities in China

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Tongji University
  • 2. ROR icon Stanford University
  • 3. ROR icon University of Cambridge
  • 4. ROR icon Duke University
  • 5. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 6. ROR icon National University of Singapore
  • 7. ROR icon Tsinghua University
  • 8. ROR icon Nanchang University
  • 9. ROR icon Yale University
  • 10. ROR icon Nanjing University

Abstract

This study presents a high-resolution mapping of climate change perceptions across China, highlighting the evolution of public perception regarding the priority and impact of climate change over a 13-year period between 2010 and 2023. Utilizing data from two national surveys conducted (N = 11783 and N = 4050), we show a considerable rise in the perceived priority (19%) and impact (13%) of climate change issues nationally, alongside growing regional disparities. We do robustness checks of our results using repeated simulations between multilevel regression and poststratification and disaggregation methods. By examining perceived impacts against actual risk exposure, we show the need for managing regional vulnerabilities and tailored and targeted communication strategies to mitigate the spatial mismatch between climate change perception and risk exposure.

Copyright and License

© The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Acknowledgement

R.D. thanks Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation [OPP1144], Cambridge Humanities Research Grant (CHRG) and ai@cam for the support. C.Z. is supported by Shanghai Municipal Education Commission (Shuguang Project, 21SG22).

Data Availability

The primary data for this study are derived from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) 2010 and a separate online survey conducted by our research team in 2023. Due to privacy restrictions and data agreements, these datasets are not publicly available. However, interested researchers can obtain CGSS 2010 data access through the formal application to the Chinese Social Survey Data Center, Renmin University of China. The 2023 survey data can be requested directly from the corresponding author, subject to ethical considerations and data usage agreements. The external datasets utilized for poststratification, including China's Seventh National Census and WorldPop Hub's high-resolution (100m) global grid-level age/sex population structure projection dataset for 2020, are publicly available through their respective sources. The temperature data used in this study, sourced from the Global Summary of the Day (GSOD) dataset. Any additional derived data supporting the findings of this study and the custom codes written for the analysis are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code Availability

The custom codes written for the analysis in this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Supplemental Material

Supplementary materials (PDF)

Files

s44168-025-00272-z.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

PMCID
PMC12367554

Related works

Describes
Journal Article: https://rdcu.be/eCk9p (ReadCube)
Journal Article: PMC12367554 (PMCID)
Is supplemented by
Supplemental Material: https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs44168-025-00272-z/MediaObjects/44168_2025_272_MOESM1_ESM.pdf (URL)

Funding

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
OPP1144
University of Cambridge
Shanghai Municipal Education Commission
21SG22

Dates

Accepted
2025-06-18

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS)
Publication Status
Published