Unequal Climate Change – Which factors affect the motivation for climate-friendly behavior?
Many scientists consider climate change the biggest environmental problem of our time. Multiple studies have shown that successful mitigation will require severe industry as well as individual behavioral change. However, in an individuals’ day-to-day life there are various areas in which carbon emissions can be reduced and many public debates overlook these differing lifestyle dimensions when discussing carbon emission measurements (e.g. through a broad general carbon tax). This neglects the fact that public support might be higher for behavioral changes in some dimensions than others.
Moreover, inequality is linked to climate change on many levels: Economically disadvantaged countries as well as households will be more burdened by higher temperatures and the accompanying changes like rising food and energy prices or increasing natural disasters, and young generations will live with the consequences of older generations’ carbon emissions. We want to examine whether making such inequalities more salient might influence citizens in their willingness to adapt more climate-friendly lifestyles.
Thus, we arrive at two main research questions: In which areas of day-to-day life are citizens most willing to adapt more climate-friendly behavior? Are citizens more motivated to behave climate-friendly when economic, global, or generational inequality in climate change is made salient?
We use a Factorial Survey Experiment, in which we present multiple lifestyle vignettes to respondents and ask them to rate their climate friendliness and how much they would be willing to adapt the given lifestyle. The benefit of this approach is the reduction of social desirability in answers, since the actual question is concealed through the ratings and there is less danger of framing a socially desired answer. Moreover, it gives us the possibility to obtain evaluations of multiple combinations of different lifestyle dimensions, which leads to more realistic scenarios compared with asking about every dimension separately. To examine to what extent making different aspects of inequality in climate change salient influences the respondents’ vignette ratings, we include a prime about either global, economic (within country), or generational inequality of climate change ahead of the vignette fraction (+ control group without prime).
We fielded a nationally representative survey throughout Germany (N=1439) and combined it with a factorial survey experiment. Every respondent was asked to fill out a questionnaire regarding their climate change attitudes and current behavior and to rate three different lifestyle vignettes. We employ multilevel models to account for the vignette structure and analyze the ratings of each dimensions’ climate friendliness and the respondents’ willingness to adapt climate-friendly behavior. Moreover, we compare whether the climate change inequality priming has an effect on these ratings. In advanced analyses, we control for the current lifestyle of our respondents and compare in-between our vignette lifestyle dimensions.
Our results show which lifestyle changes receive the biggest support in the population, which individual factors positively affect the willingness to change to climate-friendly behavior, and whether the awareness of different aspects of inequality in climate change has an influence on respondents’ evaluations.
Moreover, inequality is linked to climate change on many levels: Economically disadvantaged countries as well as households will be more burdened by higher temperatures and the accompanying changes like rising food and energy prices or increasing natural disasters, and young generations will live with the consequences of older generations’ carbon emissions. We want to examine whether making such inequalities more salient might influence citizens in their willingness to adapt more climate-friendly lifestyles.
Thus, we arrive at two main research questions: In which areas of day-to-day life are citizens most willing to adapt more climate-friendly behavior? Are citizens more motivated to behave climate-friendly when economic, global, or generational inequality in climate change is made salient?
We use a Factorial Survey Experiment, in which we present multiple lifestyle vignettes to respondents and ask them to rate their climate friendliness and how much they would be willing to adapt the given lifestyle. The benefit of this approach is the reduction of social desirability in answers, since the actual question is concealed through the ratings and there is less danger of framing a socially desired answer. Moreover, it gives us the possibility to obtain evaluations of multiple combinations of different lifestyle dimensions, which leads to more realistic scenarios compared with asking about every dimension separately. To examine to what extent making different aspects of inequality in climate change salient influences the respondents’ vignette ratings, we include a prime about either global, economic (within country), or generational inequality of climate change ahead of the vignette fraction (+ control group without prime).
We fielded a nationally representative survey throughout Germany (N=1439) and combined it with a factorial survey experiment. Every respondent was asked to fill out a questionnaire regarding their climate change attitudes and current behavior and to rate three different lifestyle vignettes. We employ multilevel models to account for the vignette structure and analyze the ratings of each dimensions’ climate friendliness and the respondents’ willingness to adapt climate-friendly behavior. Moreover, we compare whether the climate change inequality priming has an effect on these ratings. In advanced analyses, we control for the current lifestyle of our respondents and compare in-between our vignette lifestyle dimensions.
Our results show which lifestyle changes receive the biggest support in the population, which individual factors positively affect the willingness to change to climate-friendly behavior, and whether the awareness of different aspects of inequality in climate change has an influence on respondents’ evaluations.