Climate change behaviours – segmentation study

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated that to keep within 1.5 degrees of global warming will require ‘rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.’ Therefore, whilst Scotland continues to lead the world in addressing climate change, it faces profound challenges in order to meet its highly ambitious greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets, set in accordance with its international obligations.

To inform a review of the Scottish Government’s climate change public engagement strategy, this report identifies and evaluates different approaches to grouping or segmenting the public according to their attitudes and behaviours related to climate change. In addition, to ensure the new strategy is based on the most up-to-date evidence, it reviews the dominant ideas on how to change behaviour.

We undertook a comprehensive review of the most current literature and compared the findings against the existing ideas on how to segment the public and change behaviour. This review also identifies the most robust work upon which to base recommendations.