background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Excited to be presenting at the On Sustainability conference! For anyone interested in participatory governance and climate adaptation, do check out my presentation on the conference site. I'd love to hear your feedback.

When and where is the public most receptive to climate attribution messaging, and does it matter whether an extreme event happened to you or just near you?

Using over 200,000 citizen messages sent to local officials across China between 2011 and 2023, we track how public hazard concern develops following extreme weather exposure with novel spatial and temporal granularity.

A few things we found that surprised us:

Concern spikes are pronounced but short-lived, returning to baseline within 1 to 2 months of a heat or flooding event.
Nationally salient disasters create spillovers to unaffected cities, but only for the most severe events.
Cities with more active government engagement on the platform show markedly stronger concern responses, though whether this reflects more accurate signalling of genuine need or strategic behaviour by citizens remains an open question.
There is initial evidence that expressed concern about flooding and drought shapes local government priorities the following year, while heat-related concerns appear to go largely unacknowledged in official planning.

If you work on belief updating, participatory governance, or adaptation policy, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Extreme Weather, Public Concern, and Adaptation Policy