JPI Climate: European Perceptions of Climate Change

d7bb75ed-bc46-4e51-b3e9-19edd4443178

Closed

ESRC
ESRC
ESRC
ESRC
ESRC

£1,243,605

Jan. 1, 2015

June 30, 2017

Public engagement with climate change, and support for policies to tackle it, is critical in creating a climate-proof Europe. While attitudes to climate change have been well documented in individual European countries, their designs have never been coordinated. Also, each nation has its own unique sociopolitical context and energy infrastructure that need to be taken into account to make meaningful comparisons. There is an urgent need to connect the within-country knowledge that does exist, conduct rigorous cross-national research, and synthesise public perceptions at a European level.

In a two year project involving an inter-disciplinary team from the UK, Germany, Norway and France, we will address this need through: directly comparable and nationally representative surveys of public opinion (approximately 1,000 interviews in each country); an in-depth analyses of the sociopolitical context in each participating nation; and an innovative international stakeholder panel for co-constructing the sociopolitical analyses and disseminating findings.

Whilst there have been some ad-hoc surveys of European public opinion, no theoretically well-justified cross-national analysis of climate change and energy perceptions has ever been conducted. The project will ground the survey findings in sociopolitical factors relevant to public perceptions, allowing robust international comparisons, and producing a detailed and rich source of knowledge for policy-makers. Outputs will include cross-national data on climate change and energy preferences and a series of recommendations for enhancing public engagement with climate change.

We will take an innovative approach to stakeholder engagement. An international panel will co-construct the socio-political analysis that informs the survey design, and will then play a central role in a coordinated programme of dissemination and outreach. This will ensure that the project has the maximum possible impact and contributes essential knowledge in the transition towards a climate-proof Europe.

Potential Impact:
An integral part of the proposed research is an international stakeholder panel that will ensure that the projects builds links and contacts with international stakeholder networks from the very beginning. In addition, co-production of knowledge is key, as the stakeholder panel will co-produce both the within-country socio-political analyses and the survey design. We describe the four key routes by which non-academic beneficiaries will be engaged in and benefit from the proposed research in the Pathways To Impact attachment. Here we address the questions of who will benefit from the research and how

Who will benefit from the research?

Throughout the project we will seek to directly engage key policy and civil society stakeholders who are in a position to influence and guide public opinion towards support for a climate proof Europe. In particular, the within-country socio-political analyses and the design of the survey will be subject to critique and input from an international stakeholder panel, which will also be involved in the dissemination of the research. The stakeholder panel will be comprised of 8-10 high-calibre policy actors, civil society voices and other key relevant voices, drawn from across Europe. We have already obtained letters of support from the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change, French Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy, Green Alliance, and European Climate Foundation. Because key international stakeholders will be engaged from the outset, and involved in the co-creation of significant aspects of the project, we will have primed impactful routes of dissemination.

We will also seek to engage the wider public through interactive social media (e.g. Twitter, discussion blogs) will be used to make the findings available to the wider public, where it is free to be read, discussed, and used. We will hold a series of 'webinars', which stakeholders and members of the public who are not able to attend the Brussels launch event (or national launch events) can participate in for free and without carbon-impact.

How will they benefit?

The international stakeholders who are directly engaged (and importantly, their wider networks) will benefit from priority access to the first systematic, theoretically grounded cross-national comparison of public perceptions of climate change. Ambitious targets for a climate-proof Europe require sustained and widespread public support in order to achieve them, as they can only be met with fundamental shifts in energy production and significant reductions in energy demand. Societal transformation in response to climate change thus rests crucially on the support of the electorate, and knowledge about this support will be invaluable for the stakeholders who seek to facilitate this transformation.

The stakeholders will also benefit by being directly involved in the co-production of the design of the research, permitting a range of their interests and concerns to be represented.