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KLIMAFORSK-Stort program klima

Overcoming Obstacles and Disincentives to Climate Change Mitigation: A cross-cutting approach by human and social sciences - 202CM

Awarded: NOK 2.5 mill.

Researchers at UiB are collaborating with colleagues at L'Université catholique de Louvain i Belgia and L'Université Clermont Auvergne in France, on the project Overcoming Obstacles and Disincentives to Climate Change Mitigation: A cross-cutting approach by human and social sciences. Through the combination of linguistics, psychology and anthropology, this project has the aim of improving our knowledge of what stands in the way of changing attitudes and patterns of behaviour in the face of climate change. Another main objective is to use these findings to develop communication strategies that may contribute to removing these obstacles, thereby laying the groundwork for emissions reductions. The Norwegian subproject has until now carried out national surveys in collaboration with the Norwegian Citizen Panel (NCP) at UiB and NORCE. In these surveys respondents have provided freely formulated answers to open questions, thus providing valuable insight into the nuances of Norwegians' attitudes to the issue of climate change. Among other things these surveys show that Norwegians are willing to contribute to emissions reductions, and that this will is motivated by ethical and environmental concerns, while financial incentives play a smaller role. Furthermore, there is broad agreement that reducing emissions is a collective responsibility, but this responsibility appears to be rather vague, through the use of the pronoun 'we'. This vague collective is also frequently portrayed as a villain in the climate narrative, while respondents to a larger extent portray themselves as heroes. There is also more agreement on the necessity of cutting emissions than what we have seen in previous surveys, while substantial disagreement remains regarding the measures that we need to take to reach our objectives, such as what alternative sources of energy to develop and implement. However, the most controversial issue in the eyes of Norwegians appears to be what role Norway should play in relation to the rest of the world. Arguments that accentuate the country's modest size appear frequently in this context. In one study we compare French and Norwegian answers to the two questions: what are the obstacles/opportunities for reaching the goal of reducing emissions? Citizens from both countries often mention the same topics in their answers, such as energy, politics, industry and consumption. But while Norwegians point to oil as an obstacle, the French emphasize the harmful role of lobbies and business. This study will be published in early 2024. In collaboration with our Belgian project partners, we have also carried out a study on the use of the term 'sustainable development' on Twitter in Belgium, France and Norway. The results show that the term is significantly more prominent in Norway than in the other two countries, and is to a greater extent also associated with abstract political terms such as 'democracy' and 'peace'. Furthermore, the linguistic analyzes show that in Norway there is a tendency to discuss what 'sustainable development' means, while this is largely taken for granted in Belgium and France. This study was presented at the 18th International Pragmatics Conference in Brussels in July 2023.

This research project is a collaboration between l'Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium), l'Université Clermont Auvergne (France) and the University of Bergen. It has the theoretical and transformative aim to improve the scientific understanding of obstacles and disincentives to climate change (CC) mitigation and to understand how multimodal devices can operate on them, through the interdisciplinary collaboration between linguistics and social psychological approaches. The project will provide a practical tool in the form of an open-source research toolbox proposing advice, models and resources to public authorities and concerned citizen on CC communication strategies. Firstly, the project will focus on a semiotic and rhetoric approach of on-line discourses, aimed at identifying the signs of obstacles and difficulties concerning CC verbal and visual contents. We will specifically focus on the interaction between image and text, by analyzing manually and automatically a corpus of messages from Twitter and Reddit and videos and images from Youtube and Instagram. Secondly, through linguistic and discursive analyses of survey discourse (i.e. answers to open-ended questions) and of social media (Twitter), combining narrative and polyphonic perspectives, the aimis to contribute to an innovative understanding of European citizens’ opinions about obstacles versus opportunities to reducing GHG emissions and thus to the CC mitigation. Thirdly, the project seeks to examine how and why individuals can remain indifferent, skeptical to the risks of CC and what interventions might be done in order to convert apathy into action. Firstly, social psychological factors that determine individual engagement in pro-environmental behaviours will be examined. Secondly, the effects of the climate change threat will be examined on individual behaviours and responses. The methods will combine qualitative as well as quantitative surveys and laboratory experiments.

Funding scheme:

KLIMAFORSK-Stort program klima