Current surveys may underestimate climate change skepticism evidence from list experiments in Germany and the USA

Liam F. Beiser-McGrath; Thomas Bernauer

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0251034

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionDecember 23, 2020
1 Mar 2021 Decision Letter - Bidhubhusan Mahapatra, Editor PONE-D-20-40275 Current Surveys May Underestimate Climate Change Skepticism: Evidence from List Experiments in Germany and the USA PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Beiser-McGrath, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 15 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. 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Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access. We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter. 3. Please note that in order to use the direct billing option the corresponding author must be affiliated with the chosen institute. Please either amend your manuscript to change the affiliation or corresponding author, or email us at plosone@plos.org with a request to remove this option. Additional Editor Comments: This is an interesting paper and well written; however, the sections are not organized as per PLoS One guidelines. I suggest organizing the paper into a more structured format would give more clarity in communicating the messages. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Partly Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: No ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: The concept of the manuscript is nice and very pertinent in the current scenario. Overall, the conceptualization of the idea is good, however, the write-up looks unstructured in places. The readability of the manuscript can be improved with a bit more work around the organization of the text and ideas. Some of the specific remarks are as follows: 1. Introduction section: a. Please check the introduction section to identify sentences that appears incomplete. For example, the sentence on page 1, line 15 seems incomplete. b. Page 3 line 52-57: Key findings of the survey are summarized in the introduction. Suggest taking it out or moving it to the appropriate section (Results) c. Page 3, line no. 68 - Sentence is ending with a comma. Please check the manuscript for such issues. 2. Methods section: a. Different approaches to measure skepticism are described well in detail which adds to the readability of the manuscript. I suggest including relevant sub-sections to add more structure to the text. b. In the methods section, while the approaches used to measure skepticism are described in detail, the section lacks any mention of the statistical analyses conducted, and covariates used. Highly recommend adding a paragraph describing analytical approaches. Though some of this is covered in the last paragraph of the methods section, it will be good to elaborate and cover these in little more detail. c. Three different approaches to estimate skepticism have been discussed which appear too heavy at times. Authors can consider taking out the approaches that have not been used to report the findings. d. Page 8, line no. 161-163 – Sentence seems incomplete. Please check. e. Page 8, line no. 170-174 – This looks like a limitation of the study. Suggest placing it under the discussion section. 3. Results: a. Covariates are mentioned for the first time in the results section (Page 10, line 212) though what are the covariates have not been mentioned anywhere before this. b. It would be great if authors can provide a table describing the characteristics of respondents (such as age, sex, income, etc.) surveyed in both countries. c. The authors should try to organize the results section and discussion section carefully. Currently, the results section also has text which fits more under the discussion section. For example, Page 10 lines 205-206 seem more apt for the discussion section. Same for the paragraph on page 10, line 219 onwards. The deviations in findings and their explanation should be explored and discussed in-depth in the discussion section. d. Page 13, line 277 – Abbreviations CDU/CSU are appearing for the first time here. Please elaborate and include the full form here. 4. Conclusion : a. This section is well written and articulated. Overall recommendation is to identify the texts from the article that fits in the conclusion section. Reviewer #2: General comments: I thank the author for this wonderful research, which is indeed informative and policy relevant. In the study, authors aim to assess the prevalence of climate skepticism while accounting for social desirability bias by using two methods. Further the study also identifies which particular sub-population are likely to hide climate skepticism. I foresee that the paper also has much to offer to the growing climate policy literature and offers insight on improving measurements of climate change concerns. Overall the manuscript is well written and arguments flows logically. I have following minor comments: 1. In Line 15, I suppose the word against and rely need to be swapped. 2. In Line 18-23, author categorize sceptical beliefs into different components. This information is indeed interesting. However, are there any definitions of the term “climate skepticism”. It would be also informative to define the term. 3. The ‘Introduction’ section seems to be heavily influenced by the results of the study. For instance, Line 52-57 mention the results of the study. Why is reporting of results required in the introduction section? I would suggest authors delete or rephrase these lines to refrain from duplication and over stating the hypothesis of the study. 4. Line 181-187 are difficult to understand because of the language. Kindly re-work on these lines so that the meaning is clearly communicated. 5. For Figure 2, author have discussed differences in climate skepticism for all the individual categories apart form gender (sex) in USA. From the Figure, I can notice that males in USA tend to be more skeptical than the females. This is an interesting finding and I would motivate the author to discuss the potential reasons for the same. Thank you! Reviewer #3: This study attempts to assess the prevalence of climate skepticism while accounting for social desirability bias. The study has included both a list experiment and a direct question (the current approach) about trend and attribution belief in climate change in surveys administered in Germany and the USA. The study is interesting and has high potential to contribute to the existing literature not only climate skepticism but also on the method of list experiment. Overall, introduction part is well organized and methodology is robust. Results are also nicely presented. However, they are not adequately discussed and compared to similar studies from other countries. In Conclusions, implications of findings are confined to Germany and USA context. In my opinion, findings also have implications beyond these two selected countries. It is important to present implications (in the end of current text of conclusions) in regional or global context. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review?** For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251034.r001
Revision 1
21 Mar 2021 Author Response Reviewer #1: The concept of the manuscript is nice and very pertinent in the current scenario. Overall, the conceptualization of the idea is good, however, the write-up looks unstructured in places. The readability of the manuscript can be improved with a bit more work around the organization of the text and ideas. Thank you. Some of the specific remarks are as follows: 1. Introduction section: a. Please check the introduction section to identify sentences that appears incomplete. For example, the sentence on page 1, line 15 seems incomplete. Thank you for noting this. We have gone through the entire manuscript to revise all such instances. b. Page 3 line 52-57: Key findings of the survey are summarized in the introduction. Suggest taking it out or moving it to the appropriate section (Results) We have removed this part of the text, and reincorporated such summaries in to the Results section. c. Page 3, line no. 68 - Sentence is ending with a comma. Please check the manuscript for such issues. Thank you for noting this. We have gone through the entire manuscript to revise all such instances. 2. Methods section: a. Different approaches to measure skepticism are described well in detail which adds to the readability of the manuscript. I suggest including relevant sub-sections to add more structure to the text. We have now divided this section in to five subsections to add more structure and clarity to the text. b. In the methods section, while the approaches used to measure skepticism are described in detail, the section lacks any mention of the statistical analyses conducted, and covariates used. Highly recommend adding a paragraph describing analytical approaches. Though some of this is covered in the last paragraph of the methods section, it will be good to elaborate and cover these in little more detail. We have revised this section by moving the more detailed methods discussion, previously located in the appendix, to the main text. c. Three different approaches to estimate skepticism have been discussed which appear too heavy at times. Authors can consider taking out the approaches that have not been used to report the findings. We agree that this can presentation can be dense at times. However, we believe it is important to include the three approaches presented in the main text as this allows interested readers to fully understand patterns of climate skepticism and is the norm in research using this method (e.g. Coppock 2017). d. Page 8, line no. 161-163 – Sentence seems incomplete. Please check. We have rewritten, and broken in to two sentences, to make clearer. e. Page 8, line no. 170-174 – This looks like a limitation of the study. Suggest placing it under the discussion section. We have moved this text to the discussion section. 3. Results: a. Covariates are mentioned for the first time in the results section (Page 10, line 212) though what are the covariates have not been mentioned anywhere before this. We have now added that we include these covariates in the Methods section. b. It would be great if authors can provide a table describing the characteristics of respondents (such as age, sex, income, etc.) surveyed in both countries. We have added full summaries of the characteristics of respondents across these dimensions in section 7 of the appendix. c. The authors should try to organize the results section and discussion section carefully. Currently, the results section also has text which fits more under the discussion section. For example, Page 10 lines 205-206 seem more apt for the discussion section. Same for the paragraph on page 10, line 219 onwards. The deviations in findings and their explanation should be explored and discussed in-depth in the discussion section. We have revised this section accordingly to more cleanly delineate between results and discussion. d. Page 13, line 277 – Abbreviations CDU/CSU are appearing for the first time here. Please elaborate and include the full form here. We have revised to include the full party titles here in text, to avoid confusion. 4. Conclusion : a. This section is well written and articulated. Overall recommendation is to identify the texts from the article that fits in the conclusion section. We have revised accordingly, and added further discussion as to the generality of these findings. Reviewer #2: General comments: I thank the author for this wonderful research, which is indeed informative and policy relevant. In the study, authors aim to assess the prevalence of climate skepticism while accounting for social desirability bias by using two methods. Further the study also identifies which particular sub-population are likely to hide climate skepticism. I foresee that the paper also has much to offer to the growing climate policy literature and offers insight on improving measurements of climate change concerns. Thank you. Overall the manuscript is well written and arguments flows logically. I have following minor comments: 1. In Line 15, I suppose the word against and rely need to be swapped. We have revised this sentence, as it was previously unclear in its meaning. 2. In Line 18-23, author categorize sceptical beliefs into different components. This information is indeed interesting. However, are there any definitions of the term “climate skepticism”. It would be also informative to define the term. We have now added an explicit definition of skepticism to the introduction on lines 18 -20. 3. The ‘Introduction’ section seems to be heavily influenced by the results of the study. For instance, Line 52-57 mention the results of the study. Why is reporting of results required in the introduction section? I would suggest authors delete or rephrase these lines to refrain from duplication and over stating the hypothesis of the study. We have removed this part of the text, and reincorporated such summaries in to the Results section. 4. Line 181-187 are difficult to understand because of the language. Kindly re-work on these lines so that the meaning is clearly communicated. We have streamlined these sentences to more clearly communicate the implications for our study. 5. For Figure 2, author have discussed differences in climate skepticism for all the individual categories apart form gender (sex) in USA. From the Figure, I can notice that males in USA tend to be more skeptical than the females. This is an interesting finding and I would motivate the author to discuss the potential reasons for the same. We have noted this effect identified on page 13. However, we do not engage in further discussion of this effect as it fails to pass the first placebo test, reducing our confidence in its validity. Reviewer #3: This study attempts to assess the prevalence of climate skepticism while accounting for social desirability bias. The study has included both a list experiment and a direct question (the current approach) about trend and attribution belief in climate change in surveys administered in Germany and the USA. The study is interesting and has high potential to contribute to the existing literature not only climate skepticism but also on the method of list experiment. Thank you! Overall, introduction part is well organized and methodology is robust. Results are also nicely presented. However, they are not adequately discussed and compared to similar studies from other countries. As there are no other studies measuring climate skepticism in this way, to our knowledge, we are unable to compare to studies in other countries. We have, however, added explicit calls for future research to engage in more cross-country comparison to gauge the generalisability of our findings. In Conclusions, implications of findings are confined to Germany and USA context. In my opinion, findings also have implications beyond these two selected countries. It is important to present implications (in the end of current text of conclusions) in regional or global context. We have added text to note how future research should examine the extent to which these results can also be identified in other countries and contexts. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: ListExpPlosone_responsetoreviewers_rr1.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251034.r002
19 Apr 2021 Decision Letter - Bidhubhusan Mahapatra, Editor Current Surveys May Underestimate Climate Change Skepticism: Evidence from List Experiments in Germany and the USA PONE-D-20-40275R1 Dear Dr. Bernauer, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Bidhubhusan Mahapatra, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: (No Response) Reviewer #2: Thank you for addressing the comments. I would suggest to accept the manuscript for publication in PlOS One ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review?** For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251034.r003
Formally Accepted
10 Jun 2021 Acceptance Letter - Bidhubhusan Mahapatra, Editor PONE-D-20-40275R1 Current Surveys May Underestimate Climate Change Skepticism Evidence from List Experiments in Germany and the USA Dear Dr. Bernauer: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Bidhubhusan Mahapatra Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251034.r004

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