Understanding Normative Change to Address the Climate Change Emergency

In 2019 the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz declared that "The climate crisis is our third world war". Many scientists and politicians agree that the efforts required to prevent catastrophic climate change are indeed comparable with or will exceed the efforts mobilised during the Second World War. An increasing number of countries, cities, organizations are declaring climate emergency and committing to achieve net zero greenhouse emissions by 2050 or even 2030.

But it is unclear how this commitment can be reached and how the population can be rallied behind the necessary but currently unpopular policies that must be implemented.

This challenge is also a puzzle in social science research. The required extent and pace of necessary social change in response to climate emergency is unprecedented and so existing theories of change are inadequate in specifying pathways of social transformation. This fellowship will generate insights into how we can affect and accelerate social change (i.e. structural and behavioural change) to contribute to preventing the catastrophes that climate science tells us lie ahead.

This will close the social science research gap on rapid social learning and help to answer political questions about how robust climate change policies can gather broad popular support.

The focus of the study will lie on social change driven by normative change. Differently from values, which define what people consider important to them, social norms define behaviours and attitudes that are considered acceptable in a society. As such norms have a more direct impact on behaviours and institutions.

Previous research indicates that normative change (changes to social norms) can lead to social change on a large scale. I will investigate to what extent recent global climate protests such as Fridays For Futures and Extinction Rebellion, have set in motion normative change that is contesting existing norms regarded as inadequate in response to climate emergency.

I will study what new norms are emerging, and whether they are likely to be broadly adopted by society, and the likely consequences for politics. I will also analyse resistance to normative change, apparent for instance in populist attacks on climate change activists such as Greta Thunberg. Do "norm antipreneurs" inhibit changes in social norms among the wider population?

I will use various data sources (including social media data from climate change protest movements and their opponents, survey data, elections data, parliamentary data and qualitative interviews) along with a wide range of analysis approaches (computational, quantitative, qualitative) to understand the processes and dynamics of normative change and its likely outcome and effect.

To better understand how normative change can drive rapid changes in behaviour and institutions, I will study individual and community-level environmental behaviour, electoral behaviour and political officials' conduct and discourse. I will conduct a smartphone-based field-experimental study to reveal how effective normative interventions are in changing environmental behaviour.

A survey experiment will be conducted to understand how fallible psychological defence mechanisms in response to climate change threat can be turned into empowering and adequate responses to the climate crisis rather than increasing support for populist policies. And to understand institutional change, open data (parliamentary data on debates, divisions etc., COP24, 25, 26 reports, etc.) will be analysed along with interviews with key political officials.

Finally, all insights will be integrated to understand how normative and social change can be accelerated.

In the second stage of the fellowship (years 5-7) I will turn my attention to specific communities affected by climate change and how artificial intelligence (AI) technology can be used to empower these communities.