125 research outputs found
The Fifteenth International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses Conference Proceedings
No full textProceedings of the Seventeenth International Conference on the Arts in Society, hosted by the UBC Robson Square, Vancouver, Canada, 20-21 April 2023. The conference featured research addressing the following special focus: “Responding to the Climate Emergency: Scalable Solutions for the Climate- Nature Intersect” and annual themes: • Theme 1: The Nature of Evidence • Theme 2: Assessing Impacts in Diverse Ecosystems Themes • Theme 3: Human Impacts and Responsibility Theme • Theme 4: Technical, Political, and Social Response.</jats:p
How Personal Experience Affects Perception of and Decisions Related to Climate Change: A Psychological View
No full textThe proportion of the world’s population exposed to above-average monthly temperatures has been rising consistently in recent decades and will continue to grow. This and similar trends make it more likely that people will personally experience extreme weather events and seasonal changes related to climate change. A question that follows from this is to what extent experiences may influence climate-related beliefs, attitudes, and the willingness to act. Although research is being done to examine the effects of such experiences, many of these studies have two important shortcomings. First, they propose effects of experiences but remain unclear on the psychological processes that underlie those effects. Second, if they do make assumptions about psychological processes, they do not typically corroborate them with empirical evidence. In other words, a considerable body of research in this field rests on relatively unfounded intuitions. To advance the theoretical understanding of how experiences of climate change could affect the motivation to act on climate change, we introduce a conceptual framework that organizes insights from psychology along three clusters of processes: 1) noticing and remembering, 2) mental representations, and 3) risk processing and decision-making. Within each of these steps, we identify and explicate psychological processes that could occur when people personally experience climate change, and we formulate theory-based, testable hypotheses. By making assumptions explicit and tying them to findings from basic and applied research from psychology, this paper provides a solid basis for future research and for advancing theory
The Sixteenth International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses Conference Proceedings
No full textProceedings of the Sixteenth International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses, hosted by the Éklore-Ed School Of Management, Pau, France, 25-26 April 2024. The conference featured research addressing the following special focus: “Responding to a Climate Emergency: Purpose Driven Organizations for a Sustainable Future” and annual themes: Theme 1: The Nature of Evidence Theme 2: Assessing Impacts in Diverse Ecosystems Theme 3: Human Impacts and Responsibility Theme 4: Technical, Political, and Social Responses
Social Identity and Risk Perception Explain Participation in the Swiss Youth Climate Strikes
No full textSince late 2018, young people around the world have united to demand greater action on climate change. Aside from their stated concerns and demands, however, very little is known about why young people have been joining this growing movement. Using a large sample (N = 4057) of people in Switzerland aged between 14 and 25, we show that social identity is most strongly associated with participation, followed by beliefs about the effectiveness of youth strikes, level of education, and worry about climate change. Our findings affirm the relevance of both climate change risk perceptions and social identity-related processes for collective climate change action, and pave the way for promising opportunities in theory development and integration. The study also provides lessons for those who seek to maintain and increase collective action on climate change: concern about climate change is an important motivating factor, but social identity processes are at least as relevant for young people’s participation
Public Understanding of Climate Change as a Social Dilemma
No full textClimate change is often referred to as one of the most complicated challenges facing humanity, characterised in various literatures as a social dilemma operating at multiple scales (individual, national, international). The present study considers the ways in which members of the public interpret climate change in these terms, drawing on data from multiple datasets, both qualitative and quantitative, from 1997 to 2011. As well as drawing out the nuances in participants‘ perspectives on the social and societal dilemmas inherent to climate change, the present study also highlights the rejoinders and resolutions proposed by people to these dilemmas. It is suggested that recognition of the ways people find to navigate these difficult issues offers some cause for optimism regarding the public‘s conceptualisation of, and response to, climate change.This article is available at www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainabilit
Wellbeing and pro-environmental behaviour
No full textAnalysis of cross-national survey data examining links between wellbeing and pro-environmental behaviou
Wellbeing and pro-environmental behaviour
No full textAnalysis of cross-national survey data examining links between wellbeing and pro-environmental behaviou
Effects of personal carbon allowances on decision-making: evidence from an experimental simulation
No full textBehavioural influences of personal carbon trading (PCT) beyond those anticipated by pure price effects have been a theoretically attractive, yet empirically elusive, feature of such schemes. Computer-based simulation is used to examine the effects of participants' decisions on their personal carbon allocations within a PCT context. Evidence is presented about participants' tendencies to make more energy-conserving decisions as a consequence of attending to a restrictive and diminishing carbon allowance—independent of other financial and carbon cost information provided—suggesting that a form of ‘carbon budgeting’ is occurring. Further measurements indicate that the extent of carbon reduction achieved within the simulated PCT framework varies according to pro-environmental attitudes. Evidence is also presented that the size of participants' footprints correlates inversely with support for PCT; and that proenvironmental attitudes correlate positively with support for PCT. The advantages and drawbacks of using simulations for examining behavioural responses to PCT are discussed
Climate change discourses in use by the UK public: commonalities and variations over a fifteen year period
No full textThe ways in which climate change is understood by members of the UK public, are considered across a fifteen year period spanning 1997-2011. Qualitative datasets from six separate projects are analysed to trace commonalities and variation over time in the conceptualisation of climate change as a physical, social and personal phenomenon. Ways of understanding are presented as a series of discourses. These relate to people’s appraisal of climate science, the apprehension of climate change through informal evidence, and how climate is seen in relation to natural systems; as well as the means by which climate change is contextualised to social systems, to cultural and historical conditions, and with respect to daily life. Climate discourses across all domains are found to be relatively stable over time, though with subtle shifts in meaning and emphasis. Emergent trends include recent evidence of climate ‘fatigue’ and an increased tendency to question the anthropogenic component to climate change, but also the view that action on climate change has become normalised in recent years. Survey data are also used to explore the prevalence of identified ways of understanding, and to examine longitudinal changes in these. There is some evidence of decline in climate change concern and increase in scepticism over the past decade, though these trends are not pronounced. Cold weather events from 2009/2010 are interpreted by people as evidence of the veracity of climate change (more so than as disconfirming it). Cultural worldviews are found to underlie perceptions.
Findings are interpreted in the context of cultural theoretical and discursive frameworks. These present the opportunity to explain the recurrent, patterned and socially-shared nature of public perspectives, and the ways in which these are used both to understand climate change and to account for the actions of oneself and others.
The development of combined secondary and longitudinal qualitative analytic techniques is a central methodological concern of the thesis. The advantages and drawbacks, practicalities, and epistemological considerations of such an approach, are outlined in detail
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