Indicator description

This indicator measures the percentage of respondents that think climate change will affect future generations a great deal. The answer to one question “How much do you think climate change will harm future generations of people?”  was used to develop this indicator. 

Indicator is based on a survey conducted on Facebook in 2022 by a partnership between  Meta – Data for Good and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. The survey collected responses from 108,946 Facebook monthly active users (18+) from 103 UNFCCC parties.

Dataset(s) the indicator is based on

The Climate Change Opinion Survey is an international Facebook survey, conducted in partnership by Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and Data for Good at Meta. The survey investigates public climate change knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, policy preferences, and behavior among Facebook users. 

Temporal scope

• Time period(s) collected data is available: Pilot survey  2021. Global coverage survey 2022.
• Frequency of data collection in the past: One pilot survey in 2021.
• Frequency of data collection in the future: Planned yearly.
• Change over time: N/A. The pilot survey was too limited in geographical scope and therefore not comparable.

Sample size, characteristics, and geographical coverage

Total sample 2022: 108,946 respondents. 

Dataset includes data for 107 individual countries and territories and 3 geographic groups (i.e., Asian & Pacific Islands, Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa comprising 81 additional countries and territories). The 3 geographic groups and the countries that are not a UNFCCC party  were not considered by the MECCE Project for this indicator. The final country count for the indicator is 103  countries,

Three territories were grouped with the United Kingdom and one with France.

Country coverage (out of 197 UNFCCC parties) by SDG grouping. Percentage in brackets corresponds to total number of countries per SDG grouping.

Data Preparations

The Climate Change Public Opinion Data 2022 was downloaded and only the question relevant for this indicator “How much do you think climate change will harm future generations of people?” was kept. Answer possibilities were: 

• A great deal
• A moderate amount
• Only a little
• Not at all
• Don’t know
• No Response

Given that 73 countries had a percentage  higher than 1% for the “No Response” option, these answers  were not treated as missing. Responses to the category  “A great deal” were used to develop this indicator.

Country data from parties outside the UNFCCC were removed and the United Kingdom and French territories data were grouped with the respective governing body. The MECCE Project used single countries and SDG region categorizations rather than the Region categorization used by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and Data for Good at Meta report. 

The MECCE Project used data previously weighted by Data for Good by Meta. The source provided percentages of all the people who responded to the questions, including “Not sure” and “refused”. Individual level responses were weighted before aggregation by the datasource.  This weighting was done to make the data more representative and take into account population, yet the survey collected answers from  monthly active Facebook users.

Indicator Calculations

Variable used: “harm_future_gen”

Weighting: Done by datasource Data for Good at Meta and the Yala Climate Change Communication Program

The indicator is the percentage of people who replied “A great deal”.

Scale: Up to 20% = ; Up to 40%=2; Up to 60%=3; 80%=4; Up to;  Up to 100%=5

Limitations

Percentages are weighted based on general population parameters for each surveyed country and territory.

For tabulation purposes, percentage points are rounded to the nearest whole number. As a result, percentages in a given chart may in total be slightly higher or lower than 100%.

Summed response categories are rounded after sums are calculated (e.g., 25.3% + 25.3% = 50.6%, which, after rounding, would be reported as 25% + 25% = 51%).

Further, the survey only surveyed active Facebook users, hence limiting their reach. The third party weighted the data to reach as much representativeness as possible.

The survey was distributed via Facebook, which limits the reliability of responses. Facebook is the largest social media platform by numbers, yet is not used by the whole population equally. The responses are self-declared, which also includes certain cultural biases and limitations.

By being a Facebook survey privacy concerns could restrain people from participating or influencing their answers.

No geographical coverage of Oceania (except Australia and New Zealand). 81 countries with too few responses to be part of the indicator. Too few means that they had a combined response rate equal to single country response rates (Asian & Pacific Islands n= 1,916; Caribbean n= 811; Sub-Saharan Africa n= 3395).

Acknowledgements

The MECCE Project would like to thank Data for Good at Meta and the Yale Climate Change Communication Program for making their data open access.

Data for Good at Meta and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. 2022. Climate Change Opinion Survey. Accessed 18  July  2022.