Behavioural Insights Series: No. 1
Summary: This report presents a review of climate change attitudes using a person-centred framework
This review is the first publication in the EPA's Behavioural Insights series. It was commissioned by the Behavioural Insight Unit at the Environmental Protection Agency and prepared by researchers at Dublin City University, is a systematic review investigating attitudes to climate change using a person-centred framework.
This review is underpinned by Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Systems Theory. It explores beliefs about climate change and highlights key influences on climate change attitudes. At the heart of this exploration is the recognition that human activity significantly influences climate change, making individual actions, and the internal processes driving these actions, critical to addressing environmental challenges.
The review shows that differences in climate change attitudes are found across different demographic groups with gender playing a significant role. Women consistently exhibit greater concern about climate change than men. For the most part, younger individuals were more likely to hold a higher belief in human caused climate change, but this was not a consistent finding, and some studies showed that older people were less likely to be sceptical about climate change.
https://www.epa.ie/media/epa-2020/Insight-report-1-2024-person-centred-framework.JPG