The effects of education on people’s climate change beliefs vary as a function of political ideology: for those on the political left, education is related to pro-climate change beliefs, whereas for those on the political right, these effects are weak or negative. This phenomenon has been examined mainly in the US, where climate change has become a highly politicized issue; however, climate change is less politicized in other contexts. Here we analyse the effects of education and political ideology across 64 countries and show that education has positive effects on pro-climate change beliefs at low and mid-levels of development. At higher levels of development, right-wing ideology attenuates (but does not reverse) the positive effects of education. These analyses extend previous findings by systematically investigating the between-country variation in the relationship between education, ideology and climate change beliefs. The current findings suggest that US-centric theories on the topic should not be generally applied to other contexts uncritically.

教育对人们的气候变化信念的影响随政治意识形态的变化而变化：对于政治左翼的人而言，教育与亲气候变化的信念有关，而对于政治右翼的人而言，这些影响是微弱的或消极的。这种现象主要在美国进行了研究，在美国，气候变化已成为高度政治化的问题。但是，在其他情况下，气候变化的政治化程度较低。在这里，我们分析了64个国家/地区的教育和政治思想观念的影响，并表明教育对发展中低层的亲气候变化信念具有积极影响。在较高的发展水平上，右翼意识形态削弱（但不会逆转）教育的积极作用。这些分析通过系统地调查教育，意识形态和气候变化信念之间的国家间差异，扩展了先前的发现。当前的发现表明，以美国为中心的有关该主题的理论不应普遍地非批评地应用于其他背景。