Abstract
This chapter investigates attitudinal and behavioral impacts of (e-)participation in citizen panels collaborating with local governments in joint efforts to reduce CO2e emissions. The e2democracy (e2d) project studied seven participation exercises with largely identical objectives and organization (a combination of long-term individual CO2e footprint monitoring by the panelists, issue-specific information and events, and other opportunities for exchange over up to 2 years) in Austria, Germany, and Spain. In all panels, pro-climate awareness, attitude and behavior changes associated with the participation processes were observed, although to different degrees. In all but one region, the results showed a relatively strong positive link between attitude and behavior change. Attitudinal changes were greater than behavioral changes, which can partly be explained by the difficulties of changing social practices (e.g., nutritional habits) and local context conditions (e.g., transport options). An investigation of the causal mechanisms and mediating factors revealed moderate “gentle nudge” type effects from CO2e footprint monitoring among panelists in all three countries. While a direct effect of community feeling on behavior change was not confirmed, a number of community-related factors, such as social learning and the removal of personal barriers through community support were positively related to behavior change. One conclusion is that attempts to change individual behavior towards pro-climate lifestyles through individual information feedback are more effective when they are embedded in a participatory community context.
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Notes
- 1.
CO2e stands for carbon dioxide equivalents.
- 2.
Cf. Gudowsky and Bechtold (2013) on the role of information and of learning processes in public participation processes.
- 3.
Important methodological differences between the data on CO2e effects (via carbon calculator) and behavior change (via panel survey) need to be born in mind. They concern the nature of questions, level of measurement, and sample size: carbon calculator data are based on quantitative consumption measurements of 419 cases in total; relevant survey data contain qualitative measurements of extent and type of behavior changes from 316 to 333 respondents in total.
- 4.
Citizens could also name other behavioral changes in the different areas. Between 8 and 12 % of all panelists mentioned additional changes (e.g., replacing windows, selling their car, handing on unused things to others).
- 5.
Weight factor 1: measuring water and electricity consumption of individual activities and easy changes (e.g., ventilation habits); weight factor 2: rather inexpensive changes in everyday routines (e.g., turn off standby appliances or buy seasonal or organic food); weight factor 3: rather costly changes and changes in life-style choices (replace energy guzzlers or eat less meat); weight factor 4: very costly, complex or inconvenient changes (e.g., replace heating system or avoid a flight).
- 6.
We decided not to use significance values as a criterion for interpreting differences as this does not seem meaningful with low case numbers in some cells. Instead we point out tendencies and note the significance of differences when the number of cases is sufficient and p < 0.01 or < 0.05.
- 7.
Except for water consumption since survey 2 did not contain information on this variable.
- 8.
Rho Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients; p < 0.01.
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Aichholzer, G., Feierabend, D., Allhutter, D. (2016). Attitude and Behavior Changes Through (e-)Participation in Citizen Panels on Climate Targets. In: Aichholzer, G., Kubicek, H., Torres, L. (eds) Evaluating e-Participation. Public Administration and Information Technology, vol 19. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25403-6_10
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