The social capital of science has eroded globally, as reflected in the growing criticism of scientific expertise and increasingly ambivalent public attitudes. Events such as the 2011 Fukushima tsunami and nuclear crisis further undermined trust in science. In the post-truth era, climate politics, misinformation and the inherent uncertainties of climate science have made it even more difficult for the public to appropriately understand scientific evidence despite scientists’ collective efforts to communicate the urgency of climate action. This study aims to investigate how university students’ perceptions of scientific consensus and trust in science shape their attitudes toward climate change.
A survey was conducted on 394 university students to gather data on their environmental and climatic attitudes. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the hypothesized relationships.
The results showed that scientific consensus messaging and trust in science influenced students’ climate attitudes through distinct psychological pathways, including effects on climate risk perception and knowledge.
These findings have important implications for climate education and suggest that instructional strategies that strengthen different forms of scientific social capital can enhance students’ cognitive and affective engagement with climate issues, thereby indirectly contributing to greater global climate resilience.
These findings suggest that climate concern is not produced by a single cognitive or affective trigger but emerges from the interaction between belief-oriented signals about scientific agreement and relational orientations that support learning and understanding. From a practical perspective, this dual-pathway structure carries important implications for environmental education. Educational strategies that focus exclusively on communicating scientific consensus may be effective in elevating initial concern but may prove insufficient for sustaining engagement if students lack trust in scientific institutions or processes. Conversely, trust-building approaches that emphasize learning without clarifying the state of scientific agreement may foster understanding but fail to convey the urgency of climate risks. Integrating both pathways – by coupling consensus communication with Nature of Science (NOS) education that emphasizes how scientific knowledge is generated, evaluated and revised – can support more resilient forms of climate concern that persist under conditions of uncertainty and controversy.
Although trust in science and perceived scientific consensus have each been widely studied, fewer studies have examined these constructs simultaneously as distinct yet complementary pathways shaping climate concern. Examining both mechanisms within a single analytical framework may provide a more integrated understanding of how climate attitudes are formed, particularly in higher education contexts.
