The Demography of Climate Change Concern and Willingness to Act. A Multilevel Investigation of Sociodemographic Determinants in Selected European Countries.
(2021) EKHS02 20211Department of Economic History
- Abstract
- The measures to mitigate and adapt to global warming constitute fundamental changes to human- environmental interactions and peoples' deep-rooted habits and lifestyles. However, tools to deal with climate change have varying impacts on groups constituting society, leading to different climate change- related attitudes and behaviors. This thesis examines differences depending on individuals' sociodemographic backgrounds and political attitudes in selected countries of the European Union. The attitudes and behaviors under investigation are climate change concern, the willingness to pay higher taxes on fossil fuels, and feelings regarding personal energy consumption. The used dataset is the European Social Survey 2016, applied to a multilevel... (More)
- The measures to mitigate and adapt to global warming constitute fundamental changes to human- environmental interactions and peoples' deep-rooted habits and lifestyles. However, tools to deal with climate change have varying impacts on groups constituting society, leading to different climate change- related attitudes and behaviors. This thesis examines differences depending on individuals' sociodemographic backgrounds and political attitudes in selected countries of the European Union. The attitudes and behaviors under investigation are climate change concern, the willingness to pay higher taxes on fossil fuels, and feelings regarding personal energy consumption. The used dataset is the European Social Survey 2016, applied to a multilevel analysis to account for cluster effects of the included regions. Additionally, it is investigated if the impact of the sociodemographic background is different in regions that will face a substantial job loss because of the coal-phase out. Four main conclusions from the investigation can be drawn. First, the sociodemographic characteristics mostly have a statistically significant impact on the outcome variables. Second, the factor with the most substantial effect is an individual's gender, while their political orientation and the educational background of their parents have only a small marginal effect. Third, the sociodemographic characteristics have different influences on the three outcome variables. Fourth, there are marginally different outcomes regarding the influence of the sociodemographic variables on the outcome variables in regions more at risk by the coal-phase out. However, these do not follow a clear pattern. It can be concluded that an individual's sociodemographic background influences their climate change attitudes and sets boundaries for their capacity to act. For climate change policies, these differences have to be considered to reach a broad acceptance of the transformation process within society. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9058930
- author
- Köhler, Lisa LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- EKHS02 20211
- year
- 2021
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- language
- English
- id
- 9058930
- date added to LUP
- 2021-08-26 10:49:43
- date last changed
- 2021-08-26 10:49:43
@misc{9058930,
abstract = {{The measures to mitigate and adapt to global warming constitute fundamental changes to human- environmental interactions and peoples' deep-rooted habits and lifestyles. However, tools to deal with climate change have varying impacts on groups constituting society, leading to different climate change- related attitudes and behaviors. This thesis examines differences depending on individuals' sociodemographic backgrounds and political attitudes in selected countries of the European Union. The attitudes and behaviors under investigation are climate change concern, the willingness to pay higher taxes on fossil fuels, and feelings regarding personal energy consumption. The used dataset is the European Social Survey 2016, applied to a multilevel analysis to account for cluster effects of the included regions. Additionally, it is investigated if the impact of the sociodemographic background is different in regions that will face a substantial job loss because of the coal-phase out. Four main conclusions from the investigation can be drawn. First, the sociodemographic characteristics mostly have a statistically significant impact on the outcome variables. Second, the factor with the most substantial effect is an individual's gender, while their political orientation and the educational background of their parents have only a small marginal effect. Third, the sociodemographic characteristics have different influences on the three outcome variables. Fourth, there are marginally different outcomes regarding the influence of the sociodemographic variables on the outcome variables in regions more at risk by the coal-phase out. However, these do not follow a clear pattern. It can be concluded that an individual's sociodemographic background influences their climate change attitudes and sets boundaries for their capacity to act. For climate change policies, these differences have to be considered to reach a broad acceptance of the transformation process within society.}},
author = {{Köhler, Lisa}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{The Demography of Climate Change Concern and Willingness to Act. A Multilevel Investigation of Sociodemographic Determinants in Selected European Countries.}},
year = {{2021}},
}