Acting on climate change concerns: perceptions of possibility, complexity and constraint

Although there is a good deal of research on how citizens think about climate change, we know less about how they see possibilities for addressing it.

Insights here are important because better understanding public perceptions and engagement can help inform political decision making and policies in support of wider, systemic, changes. In our research, reported in our recent paper in Environmental Sociology, we explore perceptions of climate change and how citizens, who are enmeshed in the carbon intensive arrangements of everyday life, think about the possibilities or impossibilities of acting on climate change and how they think about and experience constraint. 

What does ‘personal responsibility’ mean to people?  

To explore these themes, we ran a survey followed by qualitative semi-structured interviews with citizens who lived, worked or studied in Leeds. Towards the end of our interviews we asked a question used in the British Social Attitudes Survey: “To what extent do you feel a personal responsibility to try to reduce climate change?, answering on a scale of 0: not at all to 10: a great deal”. We then invited participants to reflect on the question itself. We did this because we felt that, although the question of personal responsibility features in some survey research, it does not allow for the varied ways people interpret the meaning of this in relation to climate change. Do people even accept the underlying presumption that personal responsibility is meaningful as a response to climate change? In their answers our participants often reflected on the limits of what is possible within current arrangements, and on the problematic nature of a question about personal responsibility on climate. We collected rich qualitative data on the diverse and nuanced ways in which participants engaged with these issues. 

To illustrate, nearly half of our participants described themselves as 8-10 on the personal responsibility scale. Amongst this subset of participants there were very different kinds of account. Several foregrounded the value of individual actions, suggesting that these might lead to some changes at least within their social circles and potentially beyond (‘It’s like Tesco’s, every little helps’), whilst at the same time acknowledging such actions are ‘a drop in the ocean’ in respect of climate change. In contrast, several others emphasised experiences of constraint and the tensions arising from acting or wanting to act against the grain of everyday routines and norms. These participants particularly struggled with feelings of disconnect between what is possible as an individual and wider societal contexts and drivers. However, this did not mean, as is sometimes suggested, that people saw acting as pointless. Instead, they described being motivated to act in a range of ways even if it sometimes felt challenging to do so.  

Emotional dimensions

Some participants expressed discomfort and guilt about not being able to effect meaningful change and our evidence underlines the emotional dimensions of feeling implicated, at some level, in the climate consequences of contemporary lifestyles. It also reveals the tensions involved in trying to manage discordant commitments, for example one very concerned participant described taking a no-flying pledge and the emotional and practical difficulties this involved given that her child and grandchildren lived overseas. Our evidence also points to diversity in how people relate to everyday practices which might induce guilt or might simply be taken for granted.  Another very concerned participant was motivated to act on her climate concerns, including changing her diet and ‘walking everywhere’ yet, because her parents lived overseas, she appeared not to think twice about flying quite regularly to visit them. Our evidence therefore illustrates how what is manageable itself varies according to circumstances.  

Expressions of guilt and efforts to act on climate concerns were also connected to socio-economic context. Participants in less advantaged circumstances were less likely to describe feeling guilty and more likely to point to limited options for reducing their carbon footprint. One participant particularly highlighted a sense of misrecognition accorded to residents of working class neighbourhoods for not taking up culturally valued climate-friendly practices (e.g. cycling) despite routine practices of re-use and low waste living.  

Understanding nuance in perceptions of complexity 

Our research demonstrates the need to look beyond the summary level evidence from surveys to explore the meanings that people bring to the complex question of responsibility for ‘acting on climate’. We highlight the complex constraints and contradictions of social practice and evidence how people experience and reflect on this complexity. Policies which seek to change individual level behaviours place responsibility on citizens who, commonly, already feel more responsibility than efficacy. Our participants saw acting on climate as a responsibility ‘across levels’ from individual to governmental yet, crucially, meaningful action at the level of the individual was widely held to be inseparable from and contingent on wider systemic changes to low carbon living. This nuance deserves wider embrace in the policy sphere.  

This blog was written by Professor Sarah Irwin and Dr Katy Wright from the School of Sociology and Social Policy.

Main image: “-,- complexity [4]” by nerovivo is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.