UBC Students’ Attitudes Toward Climate Change Since the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Since the rise of COVID-19, climate change awareness may have shifted due to stay-at-home restrictions and less contact with the outdoor world. Therefore, the research question that we chose to study was “How has the increase in the amount of time spent indoors impacted the attitudes of UBC students toward climate change?” We hypothesized that students who spent more time outdoors, would show more concern for climate change. We conducted a survey in which we asked questions based on three categories: beliefs, risk perceptions, and policy support. From the 103 participants we were able to collect our data from, we found that the amount of time spent indoors or outdoors did not have an impact on attitudes towards climate change, thus not supporting our hypothesis. A negative correlation of marginal significance was found between time spent outdoors and the level of concern of climate change. We found that more opportunity for contact with nature may not be correlated with a greater concern for climate change. Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”Arts, Faculty ofPsychology, Department ofUnreviewedUndergraduat