Study title

The presented data was collected to examine the role of extreme weather as an influence on public perception of climate change through a focus on people's responses to the flooding events that affected the UK in the winter of 2013/2014. To this purpose the pilot tested survey assessed three broad conceptual areas: climate change beliefs, flooding experience, and perceptions of the 2013/2014 flooding. Concepts measured in relation to climate change beliefs were issue importance, personal engagement with climate change, psychological distance, attitude strength, support for national policies, private and public sphere actions, and perceived changes to weather and seasons. Furthermore, survey items measured respondents' flooding experience in a number of ways including impacts on property, travel and service. Additionally respondents were asked about the winter flooding’s of winter 2013/2014, covering their appraisal of flood impacts, attribution of causation and responsibility, and the interpretations of the flooding in the media and by other social actors. Other concepts assessed by the present survey were: perceived personal risk of future flooding, ability to cope, and willingness to undertake adaption measures attitudes towards society and the environment, as well as newspaper readership, education, and sociodemographic variables. The dataset contains data from two samples 1) a nationally representative sample (n=1 002), and 2) the so called flood affected sample (n=995). Public understanding of climate change is a topic of interest to many social scientists. In part, this is because people's views on climate change tend to influence their attitudes to national policy (e.g. reducing emissions) and personal actions (e.g. reducing one's own impact on the environment). The proposed research considers the role of extreme weather as a critical influence on people's understanding of climate change. Although a number of studies have looked at how wider...