The role of citizens in sustainability and climate change governance: Taking stock and looking ahead

Hegger, D.L.T.; Mees, Heleen; Wamsler, Christine

doi:10.1002/eet.1990

Cited by 10 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…The resultant findings are key to improving current policies and interventions, and supporting alternative and parallel change trajectories, based on more active notions of citizenship. By generating knowledge on potential drivers of mobilization and transformation, our findings contribute to the broader field of sustainable lifestyles, collaborative governance, civic engagement and post-growth (Emerson et al 2012, Kallis et al 2018, Hegger et al 2022. Our work also exposes the limits and potential pitfalls of dominant consumer-oriented lifestyle approaches, and policies to achieve transformative change (Akenji 2014).…”

mentioning

confidence: 78%

“…Although it offers a sound diagnosis of some of the core drivers of the climate breakdown, it pays little attention to if, and how, inner dimensions can support change across scales (Fitzpatrick et al 2022, Buch-Hansen andNesterova 2023). At the same time, the degrowth literature emphasizes the need to deepen and revitalize democracy to support climate action (Kallis et al 2018); while related literature on civic engagement on both local and regional levels often lacks a relational understanding of agency (Wamsler and Raggers 2018, Hügel and Davies 2020, Hegger et al 2022.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Toward a post-carbon society: supporting agency for collaborative climate action

Osberg,

Islar,

Wamsler

2024

E&S

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Current post-carbon transition trajectories are primarily focused on external solutions, while citizens' inner lives and roles in collective transformation and system change processes are largely overlooked. To address this gap, this study aims to explore the potential role of citizens as active agents of change. Specifically, it examines how citizens perceive and address climate change, the factors that can empower and motivate them to act, and how they imagine future transformation pathways and their own role within them. Based on a combined SenseMaker and Grounded Theory methodology, we explore citizens' perspectives and discuss their implications for improving current approaches and discourses, such as lifestyle environmentalism and post-growth. Our findings provide important insights into the interplay between people's motivation, sense of agency, and social paradigms, with direct implications for policy and practice. They show that the materialistic growth paradigm under which most people act does not support motivation and engagement in sustainability transformations. Secondly, although intrinsic motivation, along with values such as care and community, increase engagement and transformation, they are seldom reflected in current policy approaches and discourses. Thirdly, a sense of agency is key for lasting individual and collective engagement. Put together, the results indicate that empowering individual and collective agency requires challenging current societal and systemic values that lie at the root of today's crises. Supporting conditions that allow the emergence of new social paradigms through targeted actions at individual, collective, and system levels is thus crucial to tackling climate change and meeting policy targets.

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mentioning

confidence: 78%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a post-carbon society: supporting agency for collaborative climate action

Osberg,

Islar,

Wamsler

2024

E&S

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“…Studies into local climate adaptation often come from a public policy perspective in that they seek to examine how and why state organisations seek to reduce climate risks (van der Heijden, 2019;Wolf, 2011). In parallel, however, societal actors have developed their own approaches to addressing heatwaves, floods, storms and drought, operating outside the boundaries and oversight of the state (Hegger et al, 2022;Mauerhofer, 2013). Such initiatives increase societal resilience to climate change, but there is very limited overlap within the literature between these activities and the policies that governments seek to implement (Grüneis et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intentionality and visibility in state- and society-led climate approaches: towards a more comprehensive understanding of local adaptation initiatives

Eckersley,

Haupt,

Wiegleb

et al. 2023

Geogr. Helv.

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Abstract. Research into local climate adaptation has often focused on highly visible, intentional public policies that seek to improve resilience to climate threats or how societal actors have reacted to changing climatic conditions. We argue that these approaches neglect a range of unintentional and/or hidden initiatives, which deliver implicit and/or hitherto under-appreciated adaptation benefits. We present an analytical framework to organise studies of these under-explored initiatives, which advances social scientific conceptualisations of what local climate adaptation consists of and provides a heuristic for selecting appropriate methods of enquiry to examine it. Drawing on empirical research into the adaptation activities of municipalities and small businesses in Germany, we apply this framework to expand our knowledge of how communities are building climate resilience, gain a better understanding of the full range of adaptation activities within individual localities, and pose questions about the role of state and societal actors in addressing common problems.

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Influence of messaging and party affiliation on energy conservation behavior: An evaluation from the US

Curley,

Xu,

Orlove

et al. 2024

Env Pol Gov

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Governments have numerous avenues available to them to leverage energy consumption reductions. Low‐cost policy options may be as simple as incorporating information related to energy consumption reduction. Despite the viability of these low‐cost options, there is little understanding of how individual characteristics influence the viability of messaging strategies. This study fills the research gap by investigating how residents' political affiliation may affect their response to utility messaging for reducing energy consumption. We use the City of Tallahassee, Florida, as a testbed to investigate how informational messages alter customers' energy consumption behavior. We examined the effects of monthly messages on a random sample of 3000 households from 2011 to 2015. Our analysis reveals that pro‐environmental and cost savings frames result in different levels of energy conservation according to political affiliation. This study helps resolve previous studies' inconsistent findings by expanding the information analysis to fine‐scale data observed in actual energy consumption behavior. For practitioners, our results shed new light on how to effectively alter customers' energy conservation behavior through messaging by strategically accounting for the characteristics of customers.

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The role of citizens in sustainability and climate change governance: Taking stock and looking ahead

Cited by 10 publications

References 35 publications

Toward a post-carbon society: supporting agency for collaborative climate action

Toward a post-carbon society: supporting agency for collaborative climate action

Intentionality and visibility in state- and society-led climate approaches: towards a more comprehensive understanding of local adaptation initiatives

Influence of messaging and party affiliation on energy conservation behavior: An evaluation from the US

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