Overcoming Obstacles and Disincentives to Climate Change Mitigation: A cross-cutting approach by human and social sciences. Final Report
(2024) , 46 pages
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- Abstract
- Climate change (from now on CC) today is undoubtedly a challenge for humanity. The IPCC reports highlight the numerous dramatic consequences of CC; yet, the response of our societies has been slow, contradictory and elusive. CC and its consequences are particularly embedded in culture, making it difficult for individuals and societies to manage these phenomena cognitively. The humanities and social sciences are called on to make a crucial contribution to the understanding of how humans approach and make sense of CC and pro-climate behaviours, in order to reduce the value-action gap, using innovative forms of communication to identify entry-points for climate action. Our research aimed to enhance the identification of the barriers and deterrents hindering behavioural shifts and attitudes that would help to mitigate CC, by mobilising together various human and social sciences. Through the collaboration between disciplines (linguistics, semiotics, anthropology, and social-psychology), our goal was to advance current knowledge by integrating expertise on the interpretation of textual and visual signs that shape individual and cultural perceptions with the one on the social and psychological determinants influencing behaviours and attitudes. We conceptualise obstacles and deterrents as encompassing all factors, whether consciously acknowledged or subconscious, that impede or weaken pro-environmental behaviours. We compared Belgium, Norway, and France’s trends in order to describe the cultural differences that underlie the variation of behaviours. We articulated the work in 3 parts: (1) to identify the construction of awareness and understanding of CC in discourse practices, both in surveys and on digital social platforms; (2) to define the production of knowledge related to CC in a specific physical location; (3) to evaluate the impact of psychological variables on the production of CC meaning and on action in favour of CC mitigation. Drawing upon existing literature across diverse research domains, our secondary objective was to contribute to identify effective communication strategies and to develop novel communication approaches and prototypes that will help mitigate obstacles to positive attitudes towards CC mitigation.
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Citations
Catellani, A., Cougnon, L.-A., Nugier, A., Streith, M., Gjerstad, Ø., Fløttum, K., Samofalova, Y., & Harrington, R. (2024). Overcoming Obstacles and Disincentives to Climate Change Mitigation: A cross-cutting approach by human and social sciences. Final Report. Belgian Science Policy Office. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/232514