The Climate Change Dilemma: How Cooperation Beliefs Influence Energy Conservation Behavior

Abstract

Despite widespread belief in anthropogenic climate change and high levels of concern about its consequences, behavioral changes necessary to adequately address climate change appear difficult to achieve. This concern–behavior gap is often explained by the public goods character of climate change mitigation, which is associated with a high individual incentive to take a free ride when possible. This paper examines cooperation beliefs and their impact on individuals’ energy conservation behavior. Analyzing data from the European Social Survey, it appears that cooperation beliefs are rather low in Europe and that most people do not expect others to limit their energy use to help mitigate climate change. This low trust contrasts with individuals’ reported level of energy conservation behavior and the general high level of energy conservation in most European countries. This trust gap has important implications for pro-environmental behavior as high trust in others’ pro-environmental behavior fosters individuals’ attempts to save energy.

Informing Climate Mitigation Policies: A Scoping Study Based on 64 Articles Using The 2016 European Social Survey Rotating Module

“…A large number of ESS-based studies identified social trust as the key factor explaining the well-known concern-behaviour gap, i.e., the fact that respondents' environmental awareness is not adequately reflected in their actual behaviour. What they find is that pro-environmental behaviour is influenced not only by intrinsic motivation and external economic incentives, but also by how people perceive the likelihood of others' actions (Lübke, 2021). The concern-action relationship is stronger in high-trust countries, while in low-trust countries strong concern is paired with a low level of feeling personal responsibility and climate policy support (Bodor et al, 2020).…”

The Effect of Social Recognition on Support for Climate Change Mitigation Measures

“…Climate protection is a classic collective good problem in the sense that the outcome (1) is desirable for everyone, (2) requires the contribution of as many people as possible, and (3) cannot be protected from free riders [22,23]. The situation that arises can be described as a 'critical collective good situation' [19], (p. 42) or 'social dilemma' [18], in which every individual is better off by not cooperating, yet the individual pay-off decreases if everybody refuses to cooperate [24]. In this setting, self-interested individuals have little reason to act in a way that is beneficial for the collective good because others might not contribute yet reap the rewards of their own efforts.…”

“…First, there must be some trust in others and in their willingness to cooperate for the collective good, because making sacrifices puts the individual in a vulnerable position and only makes sense if a critical number of others do the same. Therefore, people must have some level of general trust which justifies the assumption that others will, on the one hand, contribute their part [4,18,36] and, on the other hand, offer support to the individual in times of vulnerability and need [37,38]. Second, people need to have trust in the institutions that coordinate collective action and believe that the contributions that political actors ask for will be used effectively and in the common interest.…”

“…First, feeling respected by society and political agents conveys that others are benevolent, and benevolence is one of the main dimensions of trustworthiness [52]. Perceiving others as benevolent therefore encourages those who are recognized to put their trust in others, and generalized trust is an important prerequisite of contributing to the collective good [4,18,36].…”

“…While a general need for recognition, or respect, on the individual level is well established [15,16], we emphasize the importance of group belonging, and the respect people receive for being part of social groups for building self-esteem and forming political attitudes. This focus on social groups and what is called social recognition is particularly promising for the study of pro-environmental attitudes because climate protection is a collective good problem (e.g., [17][18][19]) that largely depends on coordination by superordinate institutions [20] which often interact with individuals by referring to them as members of social categories [21].…”