Psychological distance spans spatial, social, temporal, scalar, and hypothetical dimensions. While widely applied to climate change as a global phenomenon, its application to localized climate impacts is limited. We examined this contrast in tropical Singapore, where heat is a chronic feature of daily life, central to climate change, but often less salient than hazards like flooding. Data were drawn from a population survey (N = 1,013).
Distance to heat was significantly smaller than to climate change. Across dimensions, heat was significantly closer on spatial, temporal, social, and hypothetical distance, but not on scalar distance, which was the most distant overall. K-means clustering on both domains identified four groups: Near (45%: low distance to both), Moderate (31%: mid-range distance), Distant (12%: high distance to both), and Mixed (12%: close to heat but far from climate). Clusters differed in outcomes: environmental concern and pro-environmental behavior followed a gradient (Near > Moderate > Mixed > Distant), as did responsibility attribution and awareness of air-conditioning's impacts. The Near group reported significantly greater severity of heat's impact on daily functions, while other groups did not differ. However, clusters did not differ in air-conditioning use.
Findings suggest a scalar disconnect: participants linked heat to climate change when thinking of personal impacts and recognised air-conditioning's contribution, yet failed to connect their own adaptive practices of air-conditioning with climate change. This underscores the need for interventions that make the scalar link between everyday adaptation and global climate outcomes visible, especially in tropical cities where heat is both an everyday stressor and a key driver of emissions. As a next step, participants will be invited to a citizen dialogue on heat and climate change, to test whether psychological closeness predicts real-world engagement. This field experiment will take place at the end of 2025, with results available by the conference.
