Climate Change and Human Values – a Transnational and Cross-National Analysis

A significant amount of literature demonstrates a clear relation between values and engagement on environmental issues, and a recent publication by Corner, Markovitz and Pidgeon underlines the relevance of studying the specific relation between Human Values and public engagement with climate change and makes a review of the research under this topic.

Previous empirical research also shows a systematic gap between values and practices related to climate change, with most people frequently valuing concerns about climate change but not always acting accordingly.

The objective of this paper is to contribute for this work by updating results on the relation between Human Values and public engagement with climate change, and examining that gap, introducing transnational and cross-national analysis of the data of the last round (2016) of the European Social Survey that includes a module on “Public Attitudes to Climate Change”.

The transnational analysis is focused on the relation between Human Values (as defined by S. H. Schwartz and operationalized by a set of 21 indicators in the European Social Survey) and public attitudes to climate change. Here we also investigate which Human Values associate with a smaller gap between values and practices related to climate change, and if the association between Human Values, social class and socio-demographic characteristics helps to understand that gap. To operationalize social class we use indicators also available on the European Social Survey (mainly occupation, education, and income as a supplementary variable).

Cross-national analysis allows us to compare public attitudes to climate change in different countries, to evaluate distinct gaps between values and practices among countries and to verify if ‘national culture’ is stronger than Human Values in its relation with attitudes to climate change.