E. Keith Smith

Climate change attitudes and behaviors, social tipping dynamics, and a numbe of the barriers to broader participation environmental collective actions: political polarization, forms of trust, dispensationalist beliefs, perceived efficacy and conspiracy theories.

Keith Smith is a Senior Researcher in the International Political Economy/International Environmental Politics group at the Center for Comparative and International Studies (CIS). His research focuses on the sociopolitical components of climate change.  In particular, his research focuses on Climate change attitudes and behaviours, social tipping processes, quantitative methodologies, political polarisation, human values and religious beliefs (evangelical Protestantism). Accordingly, he is primarily interested in why people are more/less likely to be concerned about climate change, to act in response to climate change, to support policies and collective actions aimed at fighting climate change, and how these shifts can meaningfully shift future impacts of climate change.

Keith completed his doctoral degree at Colorado State University, and holds two Master’s degrees from KU Leuven (Belgium) in Social Policy Analysis (M.Sc.) and from the University of British Columbia (Canada) in European Studies (M.A.). Keith was most recently a member of the DominoES research project - a cross-disciplinary collaboration focused on social tipping processes relevant for climate change.

Keith’s recent work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Global Environmental Change, Climatic Change, Nature Scientific Reports, Climate Policy, Environmental Policy and Energy Research and Social Science.  Please see Keith’s Google Scholar page for comprehensive and updated list of publications.