Regional Variation in Social Norms and Climate Change Action

A growing body of research in the behavioral and social sciences highlight the potentially productive role of social norms in changing behavior towards more climate change action.

To date, we have been neglected significant aspects: the large regional variation in behavior and beliefs, creating a gap in our understanding of i) how people perceive others’ behavior and attitudes in their region, ii) what kind of individual and regional factors explain the variation in social norms, and iii) how regional social norms causally effect climate-friendly behavior across economically, socially, and culturally diverse regions.To comprehensive study theses aspects represents the major thrust of ClimaSoNo beyond the current state-of-the art, providing new insights about the extent and nature of the regional heterogeneity in social norms.

ClimaSoNo promises to collect and analyze a rich set of new scientific data from a comparative survey across 130 regions in 12 countries.

The cross-regional survey includes a novel technique to accurately measure perceived social norms at the regional level (Task 1).

The empirical analysis of ClimaSoNo will systematically explore the potential determinants of regional variation in social norms related to support for climate policies and climate-friendly behavior (Task 2).

Cross-regional experiments will be carried out to test whether this novel technique of measuring social norms can predict climate change action across regions.

In this way, ClimaSoNo will produce an experimentally validated ‘survey module’, measuring support for policies, climate-friendly behavior and perceived social norms (Task 3).

Finally, ClimaSoNo capitalizes on cross-regional experiments to estimate the causal effect of different types of regional social norms on climate-friendly behavior (Task 4).ClimaSoNo will mark a massive step forward to our understanding of the heterogeneity in human behavior and beliefs across regions and societies.