Framing the Climate Debate

摘要

How concerned are Americans on the whole about global warming? Yeager et at. have found that the answer may depend on what exactly the question is. Pollsters regularly pose a "most important problem" (MIP) question originally devised by George Gallup in the 1930s: "What do you think is the most important problem facing the country today?" Only 1 to 2% of respondents to this question in three surveys conducted by the authors offered global warming or the environment as an answer. However, if instead the question posed was "What do you think will be the most serious problem facing the world in the future if nothing is done to stop it?" global warming/environment emerged as the most frequent response, its percentage more than 10-fold hiqher than before.