Evaluating the effects of ideology on public understanding of climate change science: How to improve communication across ideological divides?

While ideology can have a strong effect on citizen understanding of science, it is unclear how ideology interacts with other complicating factors, such as college education, which influence citizens' comprehension of information. We focus on public understanding of climate change science and test the hypotheses: [H-1] as citizens' ideology shifts from liberal to conservative, concern for global warming decreases; [H-2] citizens with college education and higher general science literacy tend to have higher concern for global warming; and [H-3] college education does not increase global warming concern for conservative ideologues. We implemented a survey instrument in California's San Francisco Bay Area, and employed regression models to test the effects of ideology and other socio-demographic variables on citizen concern about global warming, terrorism, the economy, health care and poverty. We are able to confirm H-1 and H-3, but reject H-2. Various strategies are discussed to improve the communication of climate change science across ideological divides.