Beyond climate-change risk: subjective attribution, multidimensional impact appraisal, and adaptation advocacy among Swedish forestry professionals

Kristina Blennow , Johannes Persson, Carola Häggström

Adaptation may depend on whether decision-makers recognise climate change, but also on whether they attribute experienced changes to climate change and how they appraise consequences across valued domains. We analysed survey data from 140 Swedish forestry professionals to examine whether stronger subjective attribution of experienced forest changes to climate change is associated with more risk-dominated valuation of expected impacts, measured using the net value of expected climate-change impacts (NVEI), and whether these appraisals are associated with adaptation advocacy.
Stronger subjective attribution was associated with more risk-dominated NVEI: each one-point increase in attribution corresponded to 50% higher odds of belonging to the risk-dominated rather than opportunity-dominated group (β = 0.40, 95% CrI = 0.15–0.66; P(β > 0) = 0.999). This association remained essentially unchanged after accounting for region. Risk- and opportunity-dominated respondents differed in the direction of sudden and gradual expected impacts. Adaptation advocacy was observed among 55% of respondents (95% CrI = 0.47–0.63). Domain-specific analyses showed that associations between partial NVEI and advocacy varied across forest-value domains and expected-impact direction. Advocates showed greater breadth and intensity of differentiation across domains.
Overall, stronger subjective attribution was associated with greater odds of risk-dominated expected-impact valuation, whereas adaptation advocacy was associated less with aggregate risk–opportunity orientation than with the breadth, intensity, and domain-specific configuration of expected-impact appraisals. These findings support a theoretical proposition that subjective attribution may link environmental experience with expectations about future climate-change consequences, highlighting the importance of distinguishing attribution from recognition and aggregate from domain-specific appraisals.