MedDataX Logo

Perceptions of Weather Risks and Climate Beliefs Among the Hong Kong General Public

NCT04919148 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 429

Last updated 2022-05-19

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Background: Local abnormal heat events may be used as proxies for communicating the health impacts of climate change when people physically feel the effects to reduce the psychological distance of climate change and improve public engagement with climate and weather risk. However, there are concerns that this strategy may be more effective for climate believers, and that it may somewhat compromise the scientific precision because it may lead to erroneous beliefs that climate change is merely characterized by temperature rises or extreme heat but ignore other extreme weather events such as flood and extreme cold, and that cold spells are interpreted as evidence of no climate change. None of these potential effects and concerns has been tested.

Aims: This proposed study is aimed to explore patterns of climate beliefs and their influences on perceptions of heat-related risks and responses to heat health warnings in the general public of Hong Kong; (2) Test the preliminary effects of a revised heat health warning (RHHW) that incorporates information about the health impacts of climate change into existing heat health warning on perceived heat-related risk and climate beliefs.

Design and subjects: This will be a mix-methods study comprising in-depth qualitative interviews, a population-based cohort survey and a pilot randomized control trial (RCT). Subjects will be the general Hong Kong Chinese adults aged ≥18 years.

Main outcome measures: Latent class analysis will be conducted to examine patterns of climate beliefs while structural equation modelling to test the relationships among climate beliefs, perceived heat-related risks and behavioural responses to heat warnings. Qualitative data will be analysed using thematic content analysis while the effect of RHHW will be tested using t-test and linear regression models.

Conditions

  • Weather Risk Perception

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Heat risk and pro-environment behavior message

Eligible participants will be randomized to either a control condition to receive a standardized heat health warning or an intervention condition to receive a heat health warning plus figures depicting heat risk and pro-environment behavior via their preferred and accessible channel (WhatsApp, WeChat or the text message) each time when a Very Hot Weather Warning is issued by the Hong Kong Observatory.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • The University of Hong Kong

    lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH
Masking
SINGLE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2020-07-28
Primary Completion
2021-08-30
Completion
2021-08-30

Countries

  • Hong Kong

Study Locations

Related Clinical Trials

More Related Trials

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT04919148 on ClinicalTrials.gov