Extreme heat shifts climate attitudes and green voting across Europe

Unusually hot weather is doing more than breaking temperature records across Europe; it is quietly reshaping how citizens think about climate change and how they vote. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides the first large-scale evidence that personal experiences with extreme temperatures influence both climate attitudes and electoral behavior in national elections. Drawing on individual-level data from the European Social Survey covering 25 countries over a decade, from 2012 to 2022, researchers including Jonas Peisker, Roman Hoffmann, and Raya Muttarak of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis found that exposure to unusually high temperatures makes people more likely to feel responsible for climate change, to worry about its effects, and to support Green parties or parties intending to enter a coalition with them before an election.

The findings carry particular weight because national legislatures remain the central arena for climate policy. Parliaments set, implement, and monitor environmental regulations, and they command powerful instruments such as taxation and government spending. In representative democracies, climate policies depend on transparent processes and citizen representation, which in turn requires understanding how climate-related events shape public support. The study suggests that firsthand experience of heat extremes is one such mechanism, converting abstract global warming into a tangible, personal reality that registers at the ballot box.

One of the study’s most striking results concerns who changes their views. While women and people with higher education already show stronger pro-environmental attitudes and a greater likelihood of voting for green parties overall, the largest attitudinal and voting shifts after extreme weather occurred among less-educated men, a group that is generally less concerned about climate change. “Our analysis shows that firsthand experiences of extreme temperatures can shift attitudes and voting behavior, particularly among groups that are generally less concerned about climate change. This suggests that climate change impacts are not only raising awareness but also shaping real-world political decisions,” said Peisker, a research scholar in the Migration and Sustainable Development Research Group of the IIASA Population and Just Societies Program.

The effects of temperature anomalies were not uniform across the economy or the map. The researchers found that the influence of heat extremes differed depending on individuals’ sector of work and the macroeconomic characteristics of the region where they live. Workers in the service sector responded more strongly to weather events in their voting patterns than workers in agriculture or manufacturing. Meanwhile, the influence of heatwaves was weaker in economically disadvantaged regions and in regions with more greenhouse gas-intensive economies, a pattern the authors interpret as reflecting tensions between economic interests and support for climate action.

These regional differences carry a policy warning. “Climate policy needs to support regions that are relatively disadvantaged in the transition away from fossil fuels, in other words, regions with a large share of greenhouse gas intensive industry and a low income level. Residents of such regions already have a lower probability of being environmentally concerned and of voting for green coalitions. Exacerbating economic inequalities across and within regions in the process of decarbonization is likely to further alienate people from a pro-environmental agenda,” noted Hoffmann, who leads the Migration and Sustainable Development Research Group in the IIASA Population and Just Societies Program.

The authors emphasize that average effects of extreme weather events are valuable for understanding how public support for environmental policy could generally evolve under climate change, but that the differences between demographic groups and regions are what matter most for policy design. Because the effects are heterogeneous, a single communication strategy is unlikely to reach everyone equally. To build broader support for climate policies, the researchers argue that communication strategies should highlight the real-world impacts of climate change and focus on groups that are currently less engaged, since these are the populations where extreme weather appears to move attitudes the most.

The study also underscores a second, complementary lever: targeted economic policy. The authors call for support for disadvantaged regions during the transition to a low-carbon economy, warning that without such support, widening economic inequalities may undermine public backing for climate policies even as extreme weather intensifies. In regions dependent on greenhouse gas-intensive industry, the perceived costs of decarbonization can outweigh the salience of heat extremes, dampening the attitudinal shifts observed elsewhere.

Methodologically, the study stands out for its scale and design. By linking ten years of survey data across 25 European countries to temperature records, the researchers were able to estimate how personal exposure to temperature anomalies relates to climate responsibility, worry, and green coalition voting at the individual level, while accounting for demographic characteristics such as gender and education, employment sector, and regional economic conditions. The reference for the study is Bassetto, J., Hoffmann, R., Muttarak, R., Peisker, J., and Stanig, P., “Heterogeneous impacts of temperature extremes on climate attitudes and Green voting,” published in PNAS.

For policymakers, communicators, and advocates, the message is twofold. Extreme heat is not only a physical hazard but a political one, capable of shifting the electoral landscape in favor of parties committed to climate action. Yet that shift is uneven, concentrated among some demographics and muted in the very regions where the low-carbon transition will be economically hardest. The researchers suggest that combining vivid, impact-focused climate communication with economic policies that cushion disadvantaged regions offers the most promising path to sustaining and broadening democratic legitimacy for climate action across Europe’s diverse populations.

Subject of Research: How personal experience of extreme temperatures influences climate attitudes and Green party voting in Europe

Article Title: Extreme weather drives support for green voting in Europe

Article References: Extreme weather drives support for green voting in Europe. Original publication (Bibliographic details unavailable.)

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: extreme heat, climate attitudes, Green voting, European Social Survey, climate policy, PNAS, IIASA, temperature anomalies, demographic heterogeneity, regional inequality, decarbonization, voting behavior