Explaining Risk Perception of Climate Change in Indonesia through Cultural Dimension of Uncertainty Avoidance, Collectivistic, and Long-term Orientation

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume V, Issue V, May 2021 | ISSN 2454–6186

Explaining Risk Perception of Climate Change in Indonesia through Cultural Dimension of Uncertainty Avoidance, Collectivistic, and Long-term Orientation

Victor Matanggaran¹, Jan M. Gutteling^2
1Macanga Institute, Indonesia
²University of Twente, Netherlands

Abstract
Risk perception of climate change has believed to be the first step to tackle climate change problems globally. There are many factors to cause people to be aware of climate change risks. However, research on cultural dimensions has rarely been done. This research examines the correlation of cultural dimension uncertainty avoidance, collectivistic, and long-term orientation with risk perception of climate change. The research was conducted in Indonesia as the country with a high score in uncertainty avoidance, collectivistic, and long-term orientation. Data was collected using an online survey Qualtrics and shared in several cities in Indonesia such as the capital city Jakarta, Riau (Sumatera), South Sulawesi, West Sulawesi, West Java, East Java, and Jogjakarta (Java). Hierarchical multiple regression analysis was conducted on 562 respondents in the survey and found that risk perception of climate change positively correlated to the cultural dimensions of uncertainty avoidance, collectivistic, and long-term orientation. Demography variables such as age, gender, education level, and disaster experiences have no relation to the risk perception of climate change. The result enriches the contribution of cultural dimensions in shaping the risk perception of climate change, and the description of Indonesia’s cultural dimensions and risk perception of climate change.

Key Words: Risk Perception, Climate Change, Uncertainty Avoidance, Collectivistic, and Long-term Orientation

Introduction

Risk perception is an individual evaluation of the possibility of hazard’s negative consequences to affect personal life. There are many factors to cause the risk perception to occur and explaining only one factor is never enough. For instance, Knuth, Kehl, Hulse, & Schmidt (2014), found that the ability to perceive the risk of particular disaster is correlated to the experience of similar disaster previously, the risk perception of a flood would be triggered by the flood experience in the past precisely. There is a limitation of cross-over effect of disasters; previous experience of the flood does not necessarily lead to the perceived risk of fire in the future due to the different context of the emergency. Hence, explaining risk perception of hazards as consequence of previous experience is not enough.
In this study, researcher would like to examine cultural dimensions by Hofstede (1984) to influence risk perception especially the risk of climate change. Apart from political and economic situation, cultural value is an interesting variable to investigate. The cultural aspect of human life is already believed to determine the way people interpret risk (Oltedal et al., 2004). Not many research provide plenty explanation about risk perception of climate change and its correlation with cultural dimensions. Besides, study of risk perception of climate change in eastern world countries such as Asia is still limited thus perspective of climate change is dominated by western world countries (US, UK, and Europe).

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