Individualism, universalism and climate change

Abstract

Is ‘individualism’ pure selfishness? The climate change literature often assumes so. However, individualism can be seen as capturing values aligned with self-determination and self-achievement but also universalism. Indeed, cultural psychology recognises individualism as reflecting both personal agency and one's embeddedness, not in narrowly defined in-groups, but in society broadly. Through this lens, individualism can be consistent with adopting pro-social behaviours, including climate-friendly behaviours. But the under-exploration of the concept means empirical evidence is limited. Using cross-country, cross-sectional data we find that individualistic values are associated with an increased willingness to take individual-level actions against climate change. Individualism is also not associated with less support for additional taxes levied to fight climate change, and those willing to take more individual level actions against climate change are also more supportive of additional climate change taxes. Overall, our results confirm that individualism can be associated with taking actions for the greater good.