No agency and responsibility for the privileged? Perceptions of climate action among high socioeconomic status citizens in the United Kingdom

Abstract

Addressing climate change requires significant individual behaviour change, as well as deep societal transformations to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Individuals with high socioeconomic status (SES; i.e., with relatively higher levels of wealth, income, and education) have an important part to play to deliver these changes. This is because they often have carbon-intense consumer lifestyles, but they also have increased power to address climate change via their other social roles, for example as investors, role models, organisational participants, and citizens. Therefore, the present study was designed to understand how high SES individuals perceive these roles and opportunities, in particular in their workplaces. We recruited 81 individuals in the United Kingdom with high subjective SES and high levels of education and income to take part in an online qualitative study. We performed reflexive thematic analysis and generated 5 main themes; (1) Shifting responsibility to others in the system, (2) Seeing oneself mainly as a consumer, (3) Failure to recognise power within upstream social roles, (4) Climate change is perceived as a distant threat and, (5) Climate action is a positive experience. These findings suggest that to unlock the transformative potential that high SES individuals can bring to climate change mitigation, targeted policy (e.g., progressive frequent flyer levies) and tailored education (e.g., on local and health impacts of climate change; on personal opportunities to support mitigation) is required.