Personalized scenario testing uncovers feasible and effective choices for climate change mitigation - npj Climate Action npj Climate Action - Personalized scenario testing uncovers feasible and effective choices for climate change mitigation

OA: www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Big thanks to my co-authors @flolichtin.bsky.social, Daniel Heimgartner, Kay Axhausen and Thomas Bernauer for a great collaboration!

Policy takeaway: support the most accepted low-cost actions, make high-impact tech affordable for lower-income households, and don’t spend political capital on measures with little emissions payoff.

Bottom line: people tend to pick options that are cheap and require fewer lifestyle changes. But there’s a big distributional point: uptake of high-impact (and expensive) technologies is strongly income-dependent.

A lot of climate mitigation advice ignores a key constraint: will people actually do it? In our new paper, we use a “personalised scenario testing” tool and ask people to build a plan to cut their own emissions by 30% (Swiss sample, n=2,793).

Le destin des politiques climatiques dépend d’électeurs ni pour, ni contre, ni neutre C'est le milieu intermédiaire, celles et ceux qui changent d'avis. Selon cette nouvelle étude parue dans Nature Climate Change, ces électeurs représentent 33% des répondants, et peuvent donc faire bas...

I had the pleasure to discuss our work on climate policy acceptability @franceculture.fr "Avec Sciences"

The big insight? 1/3 of Europeans are “pivot voters”, neither for nor against climate policies, but the ones who decide if a measure succeeds or fails

www.radiofrance.fr/francecultur...

Climate policy feasibility across Europe relies on the conditional middle Nature Climate Change - The feasibility of climate policies hinges on public support. A survey of 13 EU countries shows that ‘middle groups’—citizens whose support across...

Read the full findings, published today in @NatureClimate : rdcu.be/e7Sn4
Also, an article on these finding in ETH News : ethz.ch/en/news-and-...

And a blog on the CAPABLE website : capableclimate.eu/the-middle-s...

These findings are from a survey conducted by the Horizon-EU funded CAPABLE consortium. We collected 19,328 responses across 13 EU countries, evaluating 15 concrete climate policy proposals.

3) Don’t confuse noisy opposition with public opinion. A large share of Europeans are not hardened opponents. They are conditional supporters — and that’s where many political battles are won or lost. That’s the coalition that decides what passes.

2) Treat instrument choice as political strategy Taxes, bans, subsidies, standards, exemptions: these are not just technical levers. They are cues about cost, control, and flexibility.

Some key takeaways: 1) Make fairness legible. People react strongly to who pays and who benefits — and whether support for vulnerable groups is credible.

Opinions within conditional middle matter electorally. They are a crucial swing constituency, most likely to vote for parties within the centrist and centre-right that anchor European parliamentary majorities

We also asked where “climate money” should go (e.g., Social Climate Fund revenues). The conditional middle prioritises visible benefits, especially support for vulnerable households and adaptation-oriented spending, over adaptation and compensating displaced fossil fuel workers.

Small swings amongst the conditional middle can have a big impact on what’s politically feasible. In a simple simulation, moving only the fence-sitting slice from neutral → support raises # of majority-backed policies across Europe from 4/15 to 10/15.

This group is moved by what they think a policy will cost and deliver — who pays, who benefits, and how intrusive it feels - and not by political orientation, climate concern or sociodemos (together explaining only ~5% of variance)

Climate politics sounds increasingly polarised. But in Europe, support for climate isn’t driven by die-hard supporters or opponents. It tends to be shaped by a large “conditional middle” (33%).

In the following days, we will share more specific insights for each of the city reports - Accra, Delhi, Jakarta and Johannesburg

Strong demand for pollution mitigation policies, from fines on waste burning, to banning old polluting vehicles: People support policies, even when they might bear an economic cost.

Across the four cities, we find:
High levels of concern about air pollution: respondents selected air pollution as one of their most important worries, alongside public safety & their own economic situation.

We conducted surveys with respondents (n = 11,556) in Jakarta (ID), Delhi (IN), Accra (GH) and Johannesburg (ZA) between January and April last year. The questions mostly focused on air pollution perceptions and expectations regarding government mitigation action.

Citizens play an important role in fighting air pollution around the world. Yet, in many of the most polluted areas, we still don’t know what people think about the problem of air pollution, who they hold responsible, or what they want their governments to do about it.

Understanding what people think about air pollution, and what they want their government to do about it (if anything) is one of the key open questions faced by governments trying to solve air pollution.

Very excited to share the release of our data-based report series – “What do people think and want?” - focusing on air pollution perceptions across four cities facing high levels of air pollution (Accra, Delhi, Jakarta and Johannesburg).

ib.ethz.ch/research/air...

Delft joins The Hague & Utrecht in banning #fossilfuel ads in public. Read more about how these bans challenge #norms and #climateaction in this commentary by our colleague @thijsbouman.bsky.social Bouman, Jan Willem Bolderdijk & @ekeithsmith.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Restoring Gold Standard Science By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 7301 of title 5, United

There is a new Executive Order that is closely related to many of the topics promoted in the science reform movement. It deserves a close read as it will surely have implications for how some promoted reforms are implemented in policy and practice. My hot take 🧵

www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

GESIS Summer School in Survey Methodolgy Introduction to Conjoint Survey Experiments 04 to 08 August | Cologne Franziska Quoß (GESIS) & Lukas Rudolph (University of Konstanz)

Need causal insights into how people make decisions? Conjoint survey experiments let you unpack complex choices in realistic settings. Learn to design, implement, and analyze them in our #GESISsummerschool course with @phanxi.bsky.social & Lukas Rudolph.

Book Now ➡️ t1p.de/GSS25-C6

A minor typo here. I meant to write “broad economic and health benefits”, but the story remains the same. Lots of non-air pollution environmental co-benefits as well with such actions (alongside economic and health ones).

More, better and enhanced data can certainly help policy making, implementation and citizen awareness, but the absence of data should not necessitate the absence of action. Nor is more data necessary before effective solutions can be implemented

Many pollution mitigating solutions (waste management, electrification, road infrastructure, public transit, renewable energy investment) are “no regrets” policies, having broad environmental and health benefits, and should be adopted in any case

The evidence of air pollution is undeniable in many lower/middle income countries. Regardless of absolute levels of exposure, mitigating measures can save lives. Governments don’t need to wait for more evidence before acting

Persistent inequalities in global air quality monitoring should not delay pollution mitigation | PNAS Air pollution is a global health crisis that disproportionately affects lower- and middle-income countries. We examine global air quality monitorin...

Great inequalities persist in air quality monitoring. People in rich countries are 12x more likely than to have monitoring. But that doesn’t mean we need to wait for more monitors to reduce air pollution… ⬇️ new paper with Camille de Lauriere and Ella Henninger in PNAS : www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...