Funding tool: Citizen Science
Project-ID: FTI23-C-004
Project start: 01. Oktober 2024
Project end: 30. September 2027
Runtime: 36 months / ongoing
Funding amount: € 359.227,00

Brief summary:
Achieving decarbonisation requires a pivotal societal transformation at the local level, where carbon emissions are produced. Societal transformation means engaging citizens not just as individuals but also as members of their local communities (e.g. as members of local organisations) which provide social support, are role models, and convey normative expectations for adopting climate-friendly practices. Identification with a certain social group makes citizens join collective efforts and leads to the group's social norms becoming self-defining and creating an internal obligation for members to become and remain actively involved. Interventions to strengthen social norms and encourage joint action for climate protection focus on forming bottom-up citizen groups and providing social feedback on actions, thereby conveying normative expectations. CoClimA applies these two avenues for initiating concerted local action: (a) existing members of local organisations become citizen scientists and reorient their agenda toward climate action, and (b) develop specific interventions. Additionally, it links the research domains of social norms and local action by analysing the impact of local social norms on climate-friendly behaviour, how social norms evolve in the local context, and how behavioural change for climate protection spreads through the local system. It is the overall aim of CoClimA to develop and evaluate societal transformation to climate-friendly behaviour by engaging existing members of local organisations to become citizen scientists and to promote carbon-friendly behaviour through different interventions. The project evaluates whether this engagement indeed manifests in revised social norms and behaviours among the citizens living in the community, and upscales the engagement formats with the help of umbrella organisations.

Keywords:
social norms, climate-friendly behavior, interventions, alliances of citizens