Understanding Household Climate Priorities

Abstract

With the 2030 emission reduction deadline that represents a critical turning point in efforts to limit global temperature rise fast approaching, the urgency for climate change mitigation efforts is growing. Despite significant progress being made by the United Kingdom and other nations through decarbonisation policies, achieving the necessary reductions will require widespread behaviour change at the individual level. While public awareness of the risks associated with climate change, and intentions to reduce individual CO2 emissions have increased over the past decades, prior research has highlighted a barrier to optimised emission reduction. A perceived impact – actual impact gap exists in our understanding of common household emission reduction behaviours. The perceived CO2 reduction of low impact behaviours such as recycling, energy efficient lights, and reducing food waste are overestimated, while high impact behaviours such as reducing flights, energy efficient appliances, and switching a petrol car to an EV are underestimated. With the UK, and other nations falling behind their critical 2030 emission targets, this perceived impact – actual impact gap needs addressing. If efforts by governments and climate organisations are successful in motivating populations to take action to mitigate climate change, their emission reduction is likely to stray from what is optimum. The research in this thesis set out to retest the perceived impact – actual impact gap within an online survey of 1400 UK participants and administer 3 experimental messaging treatments in the form of knowledge boosts attempting to improve the perceived impact accuracy. The theoretical framework for the knowledge boost interventions were based on core components of Theory of Planned Behaviour, Technology Acceptance Model, and COM-B. This research successfully replicated the existence of a perceived impact – actual impact gap, however the 3 experimental conditions were not successful in reducing the perceived impact – actual impact gap. While this study failed in altering the perceptions of the participants, the case for further research in this area remains strong. Potential high return on investment behaviours suitable for future ‘nudge’ interventions based on the theoretical frameworks were highlighted. Future research to address the perceived – actual impact gap should consider strategies to overcome potential barriers such as prior held beliefs, misinformation, and careless responding. Given the limited time remaining to meet 2030 climate targets, bridging this gap is crucial for enabling effective and impactful climate action at scale.