Linda Steg

• Professor of Environmental Psychology at University of Groningen

Sustainable lifestyle changes are an important demand-side solution to reducing CO2 emissions. While sustainable lifestyles are increasingly included in integrated assessment models, modellers have so far not managed to realistically model what drives changes in lifestyles. Important questions about the feasibility and likelihood of lifestyle chang...

This study examines how stable public acceptability judgements towards novel and established energy technologies are over time, which is important to consider in decision-making about the transition to low-carbon and energy-efficient systems. We conducted two longitudinal survey experiments, one with a convenience sample of students and another wit...

We studied public perceptions of what climate actions are needed, which actors should and can act, and which factors inhibit or enable those actions using the naturally occurring discourse on climate actions on Twitter during COP26. By incorporating big data computational methods with a theory-based qualitative analysis, we aimed to identify climat...

When someone tells us that they care about protecting the environment, should we believe them? Some say we can only tell how motivated someone is to protect the environment by looking at their overt pro-environmental behaviour. The behavioural difficulty approach argues that the more difficult and costly the pro-environmental behaviour someone does...

In this “biggest election year in history”, new governments are elected for around 50% of the world population. Election outcomes will substantially impact global climate action. Stronger governmental climate action is urgently needed, but political support for such action seems to weaken with the rise of the new right. Many new-right politicians o...

Climate change poses immediate environmental threats. Although many care about the environment (i.e., endorse biospheric values), too little climate action is still taken. It has been argued that one reason for this is that individuals often underestimate others’ biospheric values, which demotivates them to act. We propose that climate marches have...

Sustainable lifestyle changes are an important demand-side solution to reduce CO2 emissions. While sustainable lifestyles are increasingly included in integrated assessment models, modellers have so far not managed to realistically model what drives changes in lifestyles. Important questions about the feasibility and likelihood of lifestyle change,...

Moving towards plant-based diets and reducing meat consumption is key to achieving the Paris climate targets. One option for reducing meat consumption is replacing meat products with substitutes. In two field experiments, we tested how labeling and tasting experiences with substitutes affected omnivores' evaluations of such products and investigate...

Value similarity-the extent to which people think institutions managing risks hold different or similar values to themselves, affects trust in those institutions and as such, plays a critical role in the public acceptability of energy projects and policies. Yet, we do not know what constitutes value similarity. How do people judge the level of simi...

Understanding how different actors perceive their own and others’ roles in addressing climate change is critical for promoting much-needed societal-wide action. We found that Dutch residents and representatives from governments and businesses believe that most societal actors are not doing enough and that the government and businesses are most resp...

Phasing out fossil fuels is inherent to sustainable energy transitions, but implementing energy policies related to phasing out processes involves risks that may affect their public support. Trust in institutions responsible for handling these risks is crucial for public acceptability, as it serves as a heuristic for risk assessment. In the current...

Some argue that complementing climate change mitigation measures with solar radiation management (SRM) might prove a last resort to limit global warming to 1.5 °C. To make a socially responsible decision on whether to use SRM, it is important to consider also public opinion, across the globe and particularly in the Global South, which would face th...

Transilience, the perceived capacity to persist, adapt flexibly, and positively transform in the face of an adversity, is a promising construct for understanding human adaptation to climate change risks. However, the question remains whether transilience is also relevant for adaptation to other adversities. In this paper, we investigate the role of...

Climate change is happening and has negative impacts on communities. To adapt to climate change risks, people need to take action to protect, not only themselves, but also their community. We study whether collective transilience predicts community-based adaptation, such as joining a community initiative to protect the community from climate change...

In this paper, to jointly study the energy dynamic behavior of humans and the corresponding physical dynamics of the microgrid, we bridge two disciplines: systems & control and environmental psychology. Firstly, we develop second order motivation-behavior mathematical models inspired by opinion dynamics models for describing and predicting human ac...

Climate anxiety refers to persistent, difficult-to-control apprehensiveness and worry about climate change. Research to better understand the prevalence, indicators, causes, and consequences of climate anxiety is needed, to which emotion researchers can make substantial contributions. First, emotion theory can inform an integrative and functional t...

Are people more inclined to adapt to climate change if they believe that climate change is real, caused by human behavior, and/or brings negative consequences? Previous studies provided inconclusive results on the relationship between climate change perceptions and adaptation behavior. Using a longitudinal approach, we examined whether risk percept...

Polarization in the United States and around the world is of growing concern. Polarization is about more than just differences in opinions in society. It occurs when groups increasingly diverge in either actual or perceived differences in opinion and can involve both disagreements about issues and negative views of other groups. Since most environm...

Energy projects can cause various risks over which people have little control, because they are usually developed, implemented, and managed by external parties, such as governments and industry. This study aims to examine how people cope with such externally controlled risks from energy projects, in particular earthquakes induced by gas extraction...

Public acceptability of energy production does not only depend on people's opinions of energy projects but also on whether people trust those who are in charge of regulating them. Indeed, research shows that trust in regulating institutions is positively related to public acceptability of energy production, and more generally, to public acceptabili...

Climate change is negatively affecting people's health, safety, and well-being. Therefore, it is crucial to understand whether people perceive they have the capacity to adapt to climate change. Most studies on whether people can adapt to climate change focus on preventing negative outcomes and the ability to ‘bounce back’. We propose that adaptatio...

Encouraging pro-environmental behaviour is necessary to reduce CO2 emissions and limit global climate change. Many reviews and meta-analyses have been published examining the effectiveness of interventions to promote pro-environmental behaviour. Yet, it remains unclear which interventions are most effective, when and why. Because interventions are...

The Summary for Urban Policymakers (SUP) series distils the IPCC reports into targeted summaries to inform action at the city and regional scale. This third volume in the series, What the Latest Science on Climate Change Mitigation Means for Cities and Urban Areas offers a concise and accessible distillation of the IPCC Working Group III Report for...

Do voters for different parties have distinct climate attitudes because of their positions on other issues? With European Social Survey (ESS) data, we find that in Western (but not Central and Eastern) Europe there is a linkage between left-right self-placement and climate attitudes that cannot be accounted for by economic egalitarianism or liberal...

Despite the urgency of mitigating climate change, climate action remains insufficient. People are therefore often seen as being unmotivated to take climate action. Yet, research suggests most people are motivated. To mitigate climate change, barriers that obstruct people from realizing their motivations need to be removed altogether.

Efforts to reduce the environmental impact of businesses have seen many organizations introduce corporate environmental responsibility (CER) goals and policies. Although previous research has demonstrated that the implementation of CER has successfully led to employees’ pro-environmental behavior, less clear is why and how CER adoption influences t...

This study examines the validity of virtual reality for assessing the restorative quality of environments. In Study 1, participants (N= 23) visited a real natural and a real urban environment, after completing a task to induce mental fatigue (i.e., a Sudoku task). We found that perceived restorative characteristics, preference ratings, experienced...

Research has shown that dynamic norm information can promote pro-environmental actions (i.e. information indicating that a growing number of people are behaving pro-environmentally). Yet, the question remains whether adding dynamic norm information would increase the effectiveness of information on the environmental consequences of behavior. We com...

The Working Group III (WG III) contribution to the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) assesses literature on the scientific, technological, environmental, economic and social aspects of mitigation of climate change. The report reflects new findings in the relevant literature and builds on previous IPCC reports, including the WG III contribution t...

Public acceptability of energy projects depends on people’s trust in agents responsible for those projects. We examined to what extent different dimensions of trust, notably integrity- and competence-based trust, are associated with public acceptability of real ongoing energy projects associated with acute risks and other consequences. A series of...

People are increasingly exposed to climate-related hazards, including floods, droughts, and vector-borne diseases. A broad repertoire of adaptation actions is needed to adapt to these various hazards. It is therefore important to identify general psychological antecedents that motivate people to engage in many different adaptation actions, in respo...

The feasibility assessment (FA) presents a systematic framework to assess adaptation and mitigation options organised by system transitions. This Cross-Chapter Box assessed the feasibility of 23 adaptation options across six dimensions: economic, technological, institutional, socio-cultural, environmental-ecological, and geophysical to identify fac...

The appliances people adopt, and the way they use them, can critically influence the sustainable energy transition. People are often attracted to appliances with many setting options that offer them more control. Yet, operating many setting options can have negative consequences for users (e.g., user frustration) and the management of sustainable e...

Human behaviour change is necessary to meet targets set by the Paris Agreement to mitigate climate change. Restrictions and regulations put in place globally to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 during 2020 have had a substantial impact on everyday life, including many carbon-intensive behaviours such as transportation. Changes to transportation beha...

Community energy initiatives are set up by volunteers in local communities to promote sustainable energy behaviors and help to facilitate a sustainable energy transition. A key question is what motivates people to be involved in such initiatives. We propose that next to a stronger personal motivation for sustainable energy, people’s perception that...

Environmental values and identities, at the personal and group level, motivate individuals’ climate actions. Many individuals report having strong environmental values and self-identities, and thus appear personally motivated to support and take climate action. To achieve society-wide climate action, we argue that it is critical to fully use this p...

Behavioral science approaches to promoting sustainable action have mainly focused on cognitive processes, whereas the role of emotions has received comparably little attention. However, emotions have a great but currently not fully exploited potential to contribute to a sustainable behavior change. In this perspective, we summarize recent research...

Mitigation solutions are often evaluated in terms of costs and greenhouse gas reduction potentials, missing out on the consideration of direct effects on human well-being. Here, we systematically assess the mitigation potential of demand-side options categorized into avoid, shift and improve, and their human well-being links. We show that these opt...

Public participation in decision making is considered an important factor that could enhance public acceptability of decision-making process and resulting decisions on renewable energy projects. Yet, little is known about when and how public participation can enhance public acceptability. In two experimental studies where no real decisions were tak...

Human behaviour change is necessary to meet targets set by the Paris Agreement to mitigate climate change. Restrictions and regulations put in place globally to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 during 2020 have had a substantial impact on everyday life, including many carbon-intensive behaviours such as transportation. Changes to transportation beha...

Research on abstract and/or hypothetical energy projects (e.g., nuclear, wind, solar energy) has shown that people favour energy projects that support their core values, and disfavour energy projects that threaten their core values. The question is to what extent people consider the implications for their values once energy projects become concrete...

Policies that mandate the adoption of renewable energy innovations could ensure their widespread adoption. Yet, such policies may not be implemented if they face strong opposition from the public, especially when strong negative emotions are at the core of opposition. In a field experiment (N = 97), we investigated people's emotional responses to t...

The present research aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a three-week free public transport card in encouraging people to commute to work using public transport both in the short term (while the incentive is in place) and long term (after the incentive is removed). Moreover, we tested effects of the free public transport card on motivations to u...

To mitigate the impacts and spread of COVID-19, drastic mitigative actions are demanded from individuals worldwide, including social distancing, health behaviours and self-quarantining. A key question is what motivates individuals to take and support such actions. Early in the COVID-19 crisis, we hypothesized and found in two studies (in the Nether...

In this paper, a novel distributed control strategy addressing a (feasible) psycho-social-physical welfare problem in islanded Direct Current (DC) smart grids is proposed. Firstly, we formulate a (convex) optimization problem that allows prosumers to share current with each other, taking into account the technical and physical aspects and constrain...

Installing photovoltaic panels (PV) on household rooftops can significantly contribute to mitigating anthropogenic climate change. The mitigation potential will be much higher when households would use PVs in a sustainable way, that is, if they match their electricity demand to their PVs electricity production, as to avoid using electricity from th...

Public resistance to sustainable innovations is oftentimes accompanied by strong negative emotions. Therefore, it is essential to better understand the underlying factors of emotions toward sustainable innovations to facilitate their successful implementation. Based on the Value-Innovation-Congruence model of Emotional responses (VICE model), we ar...

People's perceptions of climate change have been of great interest for understanding how people respond to climate change. Yet, studies differ greatly in how they assess climate change perceptions, which makes it difficult to compare and integrate findings. The aim of this paper is to develop and validate a scale to reliably measure people's climat...

To effectively limit climate change, we need people to both behave pro-environmentally and support environmental policy. However, there are conflicting results about whether people are likely to do both these actions. Extending previous research, we propose that people are likely to both behave pro-environmentally and support environmental policy b...

The Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) have a key role to play in understanding which factors and policies would motivate, encourage and enable different actors to adopt a wide range of sustainable energy behaviours and support the required system changes and policies. The SSH can provide critical insights into how consumers could be empowered to...

Human behaviour change is necessary to meet targets set by the Paris Agreement to mitigate climate change. Restrictions and regulations put in place globally to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 during 2020 have had a substantial impact on everyday life, including many carbon-intensive behaviours such as transportation. Changes to transportation beha...

Energy projects can pose serious risks that can elicit negative emotions in people, threatening their well-being and fueling public resistance. As energy projects are oftentimes controlled by governments and industry, people have to rely on responsible parties for preventing and reducing the risks. We introduced the TEAR model and examined to what...

To reduce environmental problems, citizens, governments, and organisations need to take action to reduce their environmental impact. In the current paper, we tested if and how perceived environmental responsibility of organisations and government is related to pro-environmental behaviour and acceptability of pro-environmental policies among employe...

Net-zero energy systems are critical for reducing global temperature change to 1.5°C. Transitioning to net-zero systems is simultaneously a technological and a social challenge. Different net-zero configurations imply different system and lifestyle changes, and strongly depend on people supporting and adopting these changes. This Perspective presen...

Highlights: -personal values and perceptions of other people's values impact climate action -individuals relatively strongly endorse biospheric values -strong biospheric values are associated with more climate action -people often think others endorse biospheric values less strongly than themselves -more accurate perceptions of each other's values...

Background Products made from recycled organic materials are an important part of a circular economy, but the question is whether they will be adopted by the public. Such products can elicit strong emotional responses and public resistance. As a case in point, we studied products made from sewage waste, such as recycled toilet paper, which can serv...

Most research in environmental psychology is conducted in individualistic countries and focuses on factors pertaining to individuals. It is yet unclear whether these findings also apply to more collectivistic countries, in which group factors might play a prominent role. In the current paper, we test the individual-focused value–identity–behaviour...

Community environmental initiatives are set up by community members to promote pro-environmental behaviours in their community. Community members involved in these initiatives are likely to behave more pro-environmentally. Yet, the question remains how to get community members involved. Previous findings suggest stronger environmental and communal,...

The aim of this study was to gain an in-depth understanding of the factors that underlie public officials' engagement in corruption. Given the significant public interest, we gained permission from the Dutch Ministry of Justice to analyze multiple confidential criminal files of cases in which Dutch public officials took bribes from private companie...

One way to enhance rule compliance is to provide people with arguments explaining why the desired behavior is important. We argue that there might be another, potentially more effective way to enhance rule compliance: ask people to generate arguments in favor of the rule themselves, which can trigger a process of self-persuasion. We compared the ef...

In this paper, we bridge two disciplines: systems & control and environmental psychology. We develop second order Behavior and Personal norm (BP) based models (which are consistent with some studies on opinion dynamics) for describing and predicting human activities related to the final use of energy, where psychological variables, financial incent...

Climate mitigation solutions are often evaluated in terms of their costs and potentials. This accounting, however, shortcuts a comprehensive evaluation of how climate solutions affect human well-being, which, at best, may only be crudely related to cost considerations. Here, we systematically list key sectoral mitigation options on the demand side,...

Purpose: While it is often suggested that individuals' pro-environmental behaviors may be linked with their subjective wellbeing, the strength and direction (e.g., positive or negative) of this relation is unclear. Because pro-environmental behaviors impact peoples' everyday lives, understanding this relation is critical for promoting long-term env...

Public participation in decision making has been widely advocated by scholars and practitioners as a remedy for public resistance against sustainable energy projects. Yet, it is unclear via which processes public participation in decision making may affect public acceptability of energy projects. We hypothesize that public participation in decision...

Cities can play a pivotal role in accelerating climate action (i.e., climate mitigation and adaption). Yet, the success of cities’ climate strategies strongly depends on the cities’ residents, as city residents often have to accept, adopt, undertake and participate in climate actions. In the current paper, we discuss how better understanding city r...

Early in 2020, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) spread around the world, disrupting lives and societies. In some places, public responses to COVID-19 were remarkably rapid and forceful, particularly in comparison to global environmental crises. What can we learn from these responses to promote mitigation of global environmental crises? We hypothe...

Given the importance of environmental values (altruistic, biospheric, and egoistic) to pro-environmental behavior, it would be useful to segment the population – an approach known as market segmentation – to tailor pro-environmental messages more effectively. Sociodemographic variables are popular targets for segmentation, as such variables are oft...

Environmental problems could be reduced if individuals act pro-environmentally. Typically, studies have examined factors explaining pro-environmental behavior among adults, but not among children. As children are the future generations that must meet the targets set by the 2015 Paris climate agreement, it is important to understand which factors in...

It is well-understood that biospheric personal values (i.e., finding it important to care about nature and the environment) predict individuals' pro-environmental engagement (i.e., motivations, beliefs, attitudes, actions). Yet, little is known about the potential influence group's biospheric values may have on individuals' pro-environmental engage...

To reach global climate targets, it is key that individuals support and undertake climate action. What motivates such actions? We discuss how climate actions are rooted in – and motivated by – values, which reflect stable and general life-goals that guide individuals’ behaviours. We focus on the often studied personal values, as well as on the rela...

Recent research found that when asked explicitly, people associate (future) sustainable actions with positive instead of negative emotions. This empirical finding implies that policy makers could harness people's intrinsic motivation to promote sustainable actions. It is however not clear where this association between sustainable actions and posit...

Political leaders can influence public beliefs about climate change, and climate beliefs can influence climate actions. But, much is still unknown about (1) whether changes in political landscapes influence public’s climate beliefs and (2) the psychological process through which climate beliefs influence pro-environmental sentiments and actions. Ac...

The IPCC’s report on Global Warming of 1.5°C positioned climate change as one of the most worrying issues mankind has ever faced. Although many people worry about climate change, there is still much unknown about the origins and outcomes of worry about climate change; particularly, whether and how it can motivate specific and personal climate actio...

Understanding public attitudes to climate change and energy preferences is key to a successful transformation to a low-carbon society. While many studies have examined relationships between specific variables, little is known about the breadth of relationships between multiple climate and energy-relevant concepts. In this paper we used network mode...

Acceptability of renewable energy projects depends on the trust people have in agents responsible for those projects. Two dimensions of trust are relevant in this respect: competence-based and integrity-based trust. Yet, the unique and interaction effects of these two dimensions of trust on project acceptability are not well understood. We conducte...

In this paper, a novel distributed control strategy addressing a (feasible) social-physical welfare problem in Direct Current (DC) smart grids is proposed, which is based on physical, technical and social aspects of the grid. Firstly, we formulate a (convex) optimization problem that allows prosumers to share power -- and the financial and psycho-s...

This research aims to develop a decision tree model for understanding actual gas consumption in residential buildings. Extending previous studies, this study examined to what extent four different type of factors, building characteristics, socio-demographics, psychological factors and household behaviour can explain actual gas consumption of Dutch...

We studied to what extent perceived adoption norms affect the likelihood of adopting sustainable innovations, next to evaluations of the instrumental, environmental and symbolic attributes of these innovations. As hypothesised, results showed that people are more likely to adopt a sustainable innovation the more they evaluate the attributes of thes...

Given the need for global action on climate change, it is crucial to comprehend which factors motivate people in different countries to act more pro-environmentally. Lithuania is a post-socialist country that has recently increased commitment to foster pro-environmental behavior of individuals, by implementing interventions that target mainly the p...

As global temperatures increase, so do the frequency and severity of various natural hazards. Worldwide, climate change can influence incidences of natural hazards such as wildfires, flooding, heatwaves, droughts, vector-borne diseases, and mudslides. Such events can be deadly, traumatizing, and cause significant economic damages. Climate change ad...

We are facing environmental crises, but pro-environmental action is seriously lagging behind. Contrary to popular beliefs, we argue that this is not caused by people undervaluing the environment but rather by people structurally underestimating how much others care. Only through showing that many do value the environment will we inspire society-wid...

It is always an honor when, after one publishes a study, somebody takes the time and effort to figure out how it could have been done better (Lindenberg et al., 2018; Przepiorka, 2019). It is a public service, and we are grateful for the effort. Although we are and remain quite proud of our studies and their results, there is, as in any study, alwa...

Community energy initiatives can foster a sustainable energy transition by promoting sustainable energy behaviour in the communities in which they are embedded. This raises the question of what motivates people to become involved in these initiatives. We investigated the importance of financial, environmental, and communal motives for initiative in...

To realize the full potential of solar photovoltaics (PV), PV adopters need to adapt their energy demand to the production of self-generated solar energy as much as possible (i.e., use their PV sustainably). In a longitudinal questionnaire study (N = 74) in the Netherlands, we compared the intention to use PV in a sustainable way before the install...

Increasing attention is being paid to the Paris Climate Agreement and the impacts of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) intended to limit global warming to 1.5 °C. However, the nature and evolution of existing policy mixes that underlie NDCs remain poorly understood. This critical issue has emerged from the outcomes of the Talanoa Dialogue...

Exploratory analyses are an important first step in psychological research, particularly in problem-based research where various variables are often included from multiple theoretical perspectives not studied together in combination before. Notably, exploratory analyses aim to give first insights into how items and variables included in a study rel...

Why do some people adapt to the risks of climate change, while others do not? This Element provides an in-depth overview of the psychology of climate change adaptation. It begins with an overview of adaptation behaviour and highlights the importance of successful adaptation by individuals and households. Key psychological theories are introduced th...