Measuring four dimensions of climate change skepticism: The CCS-4 scale

Despite overwhelming evidence of climate change, a significant portion of the population remains skeptical. Because existing instruments fail to capture the full spectrum of skepticism (trend, attribution, impact, and response) we integrated and refined scales originally developed by Whitmarsh (2011) and De Graaf et al. (2023) to the newly proposed, four-dimensional CCS-4 scale. For initial scale development, we utilized an online panel and employed confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to evaluate the instrument's dimensionality, scalability, and reliability. We propose both a short (8-item) and a long (12-item) version of the CCS-4 scale. We then validate the scales using two waves of the large-scale, population representative, probability-based GLEN survey (n=16,226/2,060). The resulting scale correlates significantly with established predictors of skepticism and is available in both German and English for future research.