Examining differences in public opinion on climate change between college students in China and the USA Eric Jamelske & James Boulter & Won Jang & James Barrett & Laurie Miller & Wen Li Han # AESS 2015 Abstract China and the USA share the highest importance related to climate change, both in terms of their greenhouse gas emissions and their centrality to potential mitigation pol- icies. Because college students represent the future leaders of these countries and because young adults have a longer time horizon and thus are more vulnerable to the long-term conse- quences of climate change, their opinions on this issue are of considerable interest. We report and interpret the results of online surveys of just over 4,000 college students from across China (n =1670) and the USA (n =2335) between September and November 2013. We examined perceptions and beliefs regarding the scientific basis and potential impacts of climate change as well as attitudes about policy responses. A substan- tially larger proportion of Chinese students reported accep- tance of the considerable scientific consensus regarding anthropogenic climate change. In contrast, a smaller propor- tion of US students reported seeing a risk of harm to humans from climate change, while a higher proportion of US students reported being unconcerned about climate change compared to Chinese students. In terms of policy, Chinese respondents showed greater support for joining an international agreement to address climate change than Americans. Although the fu- ture of international climate change policy is uncertain, it is clear that meaningful climate change mitigation policies and actions must include the participation and cooperation of both China and the USA. Thus, the results of this study should be interesting and informative to all parties considering the issue of global climate change policy. Keywords Climate change . Global warming . Public opinion . China . USA Introduction Anthropogenic climate change (ACC) is a phenomenon caused by enhanced radiative forcing resulting primarily from human alterations to atmospheric composition and entailing, among other effects, the long-term increase in average global surface air temperatures (global warming) over a period of at least the past 40 years. The Fifth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Third National Climate Assessment Report by the US Global Change Research Program have heightened the sense of ur- gency to address climate change based on the overwhelming scientific consensus that the Earth’ s climate is changing, pri- marily as a result of anthropogenic emissions of carbon diox- ide (CO 2 ) and other greenhouse gases (GHG) (IPCC 2013; Walsh et al. 2014). Given the attention on CO 2 emissions as the largest single contributor to ACC, China and the USA are of great interest, E. Jamelske (*) Economics Department, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, 105 Garfield Avenue, P.O. Box 4004, Eau Claire, WI 54702-4004, USA e-mail: jamelsem@uwec.edu J. Boulter Watershed Institute for Collaborative Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Eau Claire, WI, USA W. Jang Communication and Journalism, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Eau Claire, WI, USA J. Barrett Economics Department, Sacramento City College, Sacramento, CA, USA L. Miller Economics Department, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA W. L. Han Public Administration, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, People’ s Republic of China J Environ Stud Sci DOI 10.1007/s13412-015-0229-9