European perceptions of climate change:Linking values, concern, responsibility and action

The Bonn Climate Change conference put climate change again high on the world agenda, portraying it as one of the – if not the – most worrying issues of our time. Ambitious climate goals set in the Paris Climate Agreement require substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emission, for which wide-scale changes in behaviors and policy support are needed. We investigate whether general feelings of environmental concern can lead to these required wide-scale changes. More specifically, we hypothesize that worry about climate change can contribute to changes in behaviors and policy support by strengthening individuals’ personal responsibility to reduce climate change. In addition, we tested the assumption that worries can be rooted in personal biospheric values. We used unique data from the European Social Survey Round 8, containing 34.837 responses representing 18 countries, to test our model. Across countries, results supported the predicted relationships between biospheric values, worry and personal responsibility. In addition, higher personal responsibility generally related to increased sustainable energy behaviors and policy support, although the strength of this relationship varied across countries, particularly for policy support. Biospheric values consistently related to sustainable behaviors and policy support, whereas worry mainly related to policy support. In sum, we found clear support that general concern about the environment and climate change can motivate concrete behaviors and policy support. The overall consistency of these findings provides critical insights on how similar climate policies can successfully promote climate action across countries, whereas more specific variations could offer suggestions for country- or behavior-specific approaches