Climate Solidarity: A Framework and Research Agenda for Low-Carbon Behavior

Abstract

Climate-change mitigation is a matter of solidarity. Behaviors that primarily benefit other people are prosocial behaviors that can be considered solidarity at the collective level. For climate-change mitigation, greenhouse gas emissions have to be reduced primarily in wealthy countries, while the major beneficiaries of such a reduction are the populations of developing countries and future generations, who (will) suffer the significant negative consequences of climate change. Climate change has created a new global interdependence that requires a new form of solidarity as a global and intergenerational prosocial behavior. Low-carbon behavior has so far mainly been studied as a form of pro-environmental behavior but not as a form of prosocial behavior. The article identifies four approaches to explaining the origin of prosocial behavior that can be applied to the emergence of low-carbon behavior: rationalist, institutionalist, interactionist, and situational approaches. The scope conditions and limitations of each approach in the case of low-carbon behavior are discussed, together with relevant empirical evidence, future research directions, and policy implications. The article lays the foundations for the study of climate solidarity as a new interdisciplinary field of research that can make a key contribution to the transition toward low-carbon societies.