Socioeconomic geography of climate change views in Europe

Abstract

Climate change views have their socioeconomic foundations but also specific geographies. In merging these perspectives, this analysis uses ESS Round 8 data from 23 European countries to examine whether climate change scepticism and concern, pro-environmental personal norm and a willingness to engage in energy-saving behaviour exhibit, first, urban–rural and/or regional differences, and second, if these attitudes can be explained at individual level by socioeconomic position and wellbeing resources. We find that climate change scepticism and concern do exhibit urban–rural differences, where living in a country village is associated with greater climate scepticism and lower concern compared to living in a big city. Also, higher climate change concern and pro-environmental norms are associated with living in a region with constant population growth. These geographical differences are independent of individual-level socioeconomic attributes as well as one’s political orientation. Additionally, the results show that both climate change attitudes and reporting energy-saving behaviour are strongly stratified by level of education and reveal that those in lower income deciles feel less pro-environmental norm but nonetheless report greater engagement with energy-saving behaviour. In sum, the results highlight that climate change mitigation is not a uniform project either spatially or within certain socioeconomic strata. Hence, our results suggest that socioeconomic disadvantage (belonging to the lowest education and income levels) and spatial marginalisation (living in more rural surroundings and declining regions) should be better acknowledged when reworking climate change and environmental policies in the EU.