PhD project The project focuses on the potential contribution of households to climate change mitigation and whether co-benefits (eg health aspects) as gains from mitigating activities can be used as a basis for sustainable communication and triggers for individuals to take action.
Climate change has been described as the major health threat of the 21st century. The question is whether co-benefits, eg positive health aspects, as gains from mitigating activities, can be used as a basis for sustainable communication and triggers for individuals and households to take action.
The project focuses on the potential contribution of households to mitigation and whether certain co-benefits (eg health aspects) as gains from mitigating activities can be used as a basis for sustainable communication and triggers for individuals to take action.
Project description
Climate change has been described as the major health threat of the 21st century. The situation is posing a need for immense action concerning mitigation; limiting or preventing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) which are drivers behind climate change.
The project focuses on the potential contribution of households to mitigation and whether co-benefits, eg health aspects, as gains from mitigating activities can be used as a basis for sustainable communication and triggers for individuals to take action. It will investigate household’s willingness and strategies to decarbonize their emissions to achieve the 1.5 °C goal, in four high income mid-size European cities. This to understand what the main determinants of households’ carbon footprints are, which mitigating actions the households prefer to implement voluntarily to reduce their carbon footprint and which actions they need to implement to reduce their carbon footprint by 50 %.
In a next step the project aims to descriptively understand household’s s willingness and strategies to decarbonize their emissions and their perceptions regarding possible co-benefits (eg health co-benefits), gains from the mitigating activities. Lastly it will aim to evolve an in-depth understanding of if and how co-benefits can be used in message framing concerning household mitigation, whether there are various criteria possible to use for constructing segmented groups for message framing, and the possible disrupting habits for households where messages could be framed in a timely setting
The qualitative data used comes from the HOPE-project; “Household Preferences for Reducing Greenhouse gas emissions in Four European High-Income countries”. A transdisciplinary, mixed method research project run during 2015-2018 with an overall aim to study households´ private consumption and the willingness to implement significant emission reductions. 308 households in France (Aix-en-Provence), Norway (Bergen), Sweden (Umeå), and Germany (Mannheim) took part in the project.
