Bridging the Gap Between Extreme Weather Risk Perceptions and Objective Measurement - Evidence from Germany

An increasing number of studies address the exposure to extreme weather events as an influencing factor for people’s perception of climate change, environmental behavior, or policy preferences and voting intention. A crucial pre-requisite is the subjective perception of weather anomalies and extremes and translation into subjective risk perceptions. Generally, research has shown that humans can perceive weather anomalies, but studies yield mixed evidence depending on the specific context. So far, it is unclear under which conditions weather patterns are correctly perceived and which factors determine deviations in subjective perceptions from objective measurements. We contribute to this research gap by integrating novel georeferenced survey data on respondents’ subjective risk perceptions of weather extremes with spatially and temporally fine-grained Earth observation data. For this project, we have fielded a novel battery of survey items. These items were developed based on an extensive review of climate and environmental items from national and international survey programs. Our survey items are highly specific and capture respondents’ risk perceptions of 1. heatwaves, 2. heavy rainfall, 3. storms, 4. droughts as well as 5. floods. We aim to exploit the natural variation of weather patterns for these five weather types during the field period and in relation to respondent-specific baseline periods to analyze congruence and discrepancies between objective measurements and subjective perspectives. Our survey items have been fielded between November 2023 and January 2024 in a large probability-based panel program in Germany. By building on previous methodological work, we are able to link these data to highly customizable weather data from the European Union’s Earth observation program Copernicus and employ a range of robustness checks by varying spatial buffers and temporal reference periods.