From worrying about climate change to pro-environmental behavior

Thea Gregersen, PhD candidate at the centre for climate and energy transformation (CET) and the department of Psychosocial Science, UiB, will speak at the lunch meeting Tuesday the 10th of March. 

She works with Perception of Climate Change Across Europe, and describes her project as following:

"The project’s objectives are to generate integrated knowledge about people´s perceptions of climate change across Europe. One important aspect of public perceptions is mental models–simplified mental representations of a phenomenon. Mental models of climate change comprise, for example, general knowledge about the climate system and beliefs about climate impacts (Böhm & Pfister, 2001; Moser, 2010). The research question is addressed by analyzing data from two cross-national datasets: the European Perceptions of Climate Change (EPCC) and the European Social Survey (ESS). Both datasets contain comparable questions from representative samples of four and twenty-three European countries, respectively, and constitute an invaluable resource for studying mental models about climate change, within and across countries."

Abstract: Energy behavior is an important aspect of climate change mitigation due to the share of household energy use in global greenhouse gas emissions. This presentation reports on research that explores the relationship between worry about climate change and energy behavior, based on data from Round 8 of the European Social Survey (ESS). Specifically, it will focus on the relative strength of worry as a predictor for curtailment behavior and buying of energy-efficient appliances, compared to socio-demographic characteristics, beliefs about climate change, and perceptions about the possibility and effectiveness of changing such behaviors. Further, we investigate whether individual differences in personal and collective efficacy or outcome expectancy can moderate the relationship between worry and energy behaviors. The goal of this research is to contribute to a better understanding of the previously established gap between worry about climate change, on the one hand, and engagement in mitigation behaviors at the individual level, on the other.

This seminar will be held in the Hellan-Hansen meeting room, Geophysical Institute (Allegaten 70), from 12:15 to 13:00 (we open the doors at 12:00). As always, it is free and open to all interested parties, so bring your lunch and join us for an interesting presentation followed bya Q&A session.