The influence of different efficacy constructs on energy conservation intentions and climate change policy support

Do trust and renewable energy use enhance perceived climate change efficacy in Europe?

“…They conducted a small experimental study with 78 students from the University of Groningen, finding that self-efficacy and political efficacy in the context of climate change did not interact. A more recent paper by Choi and Hart (2021) equally stresses that self-and collective efficacy beliefs in the context of energy conservation intentions and climate change policy support differ widely. Starting from this important result, we now answer our three research questions and discuss our findings.…”

“…Results at the individual level remain robust over the models, confirming the relevance of trust and CC awareness for perceived individual climate change efficacy (Rubio Juan & Revilla, 2021), whereas CC awareness remains insignificant for political efficacy. The multilevel models clearly show that there are two fundamentally different dimensions for individual and group-specific efficacy beliefs in Europe (Choi & Hart, 2021).…”

“…Research on climate change efficacy draws on theories from wider behavioural sciences (Aitken et al, 2011;Crosman et al, 2019;Milfont et al, 2015). The efficacy concept has been used in climate change research before and is often traced back to the psychologist Bandura (2000) who made a distinction between personal efficacy beliefs (also called: selfefficacy) and political efficacy (also called: response-efficacy) beliefs (see also : Choi & Hart, 2021). We follow this important distinction here, although it is at times conflated within climate change research (Kellstedt et al, 2008;Milfont, 2012;Tuitjer et al, 2022).…”

“…Much research has been devoted to unpacking which predictors shape climate change awareness within populations, which means believing that climate change is both happening and anthropogenic (Capstick et al, 2015;Choi & Hart, 2021;Hornsey et al, 2016;Poortinga et al, 2019;Tuitjer et al, 2022;Yilmaz & Can, 2020). Climate change efficacy research builds on this by extending the focus from an acceptance that anthropogenic climate change is happening, to a focus on whether people believe that something can be done about climate change (McLoughlin, 2021;Milfont, 2012;Milfont et al, 2015;Tuitjer & Dirksmeier, 2021).…”

“…This appears to be all the more a research gap as Drummond et al (2018) suggest that the little mitigation action they have found in some countries-despite high levels of climate change awareness in the country's populationmight be due to a lack of perceived climate change efficacy. We thus conceptualise efficacy as twofold: personal efficacy (see above) is complemented by political efficacy that extends efficacy beliefs from personal agency to collective action and institutions (Choi & Hart, 2021;Gregersen et al, 2021). As Bandura points out: "The growing interdependence of human functioning is placing a premium on the exercise of collective agency through shared beliefs in the power to produce effects by collective action" (2000, p. 75).…”