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

Christiane Lübke

doi:10.3390/su13105575

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.

Highlights

Mitigating climate change is an urgent issue that demands far-reaching changes in people’s behavior across various fields of life [1,2]
This paper presents an examination of cooperation beliefs and their impact on individuals’ energy conservation behavior to address this gap
Men were less likely than women to report saving energy, and older people were more likely to report engaging in energy-saving behavior

Summary

Introduction

Mitigating climate change is an urgent issue that demands far-reaching changes in people’s behavior across various fields of life [1,2]. Despite widespread belief in anthropogenic climate change and high levels of individual concern about its consequences, necessary environmental behavior changes appear to be difficult to achieve. This concern–behavior gap has been widely studied, and findings highlight a range of individual and structural barriers to pro-environmental behavior, see [4,5] for a recent literature review. Most of these studies ignore the public goods character of climate change mitigation that constitutes a social dilemma in which cooperation is required.

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