%0 Journal Article
%T Searching for the Determinants of Climate Change Interest
%A Patrick Cavanagh
%A Corey Lang
%A Xinran Li
%A Haoran Miao
%A John David Ryder
%J Geography Journal
%D 2014
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2014/503295
%X A meaningful CO2 mitigation policy is unlikely at the national level in the United States. What is currently happening and what is much more likely to occur in the future are city and regional level efforts of mitigation and adaptation. This paper aims to understand the geographic and socioeconomic characteristics of metropolitan areas and regions that lead to engagement with the issue of climate change. We use geographically explicit, internet search data from Google to measure information seeking behavior, which we interpret as engagement, attention, and interest. Our spatial Hot Spot analysis creates a map that potentially could be harnessed by policymakers to gauge mitigation support or adaptation potential. The results of our multivariate analysis suggest that socioeconomic factors are the strongest determinants of search behavior and that climate and geography have little to no impact. With regard to political ideology, we find evidence of a nonlinear, inverse-U relationship with maximum search activity occurring in metropolitan areas with a near even political split, suggesting that parity may be good for engagement. 1. Introduction The United States has failed to achieve meaningful carbon legislation to limit emissions and mitigate damage. For many Americans and certainly politicians, the whole idea of climate change remains contentious, and therefore a path leading to meaningful legislation is difficult to envision. Despite the stasis at the federal level, cities and regions are finding the political will to take action on both mitigation and adaptation. Nine states in the Northeast have banded together in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and implemented a cap-and-trade policy to reduce emissions from electricity generation. Similarly, California recently enacted the Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32) that will use market mechanisms to reduce all emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. New York City¡¯s PlaNYC and Boston¡¯s Climate Action Plan focus both on reducing emissions and improving resiliency in the face of rising sea levels and other climate change impacts. These local and regional actions are consistent with the ideas of Kahn [1], who argues that cities will drive adaptation in an effort to compete for footloose residents. Thus, understanding the characteristics of metropolitan areas that make them more or less likely to engage in climate change policy is critically important. This paper seeks to add to that understanding by utilizing internet search data from Google Trends. Specifically, we examine how the characteristics of
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/geography/2014/503295/