Abstract

In order to tackle climate change, the need of an active involvement of social actors and of the general public in the societal transition has been increasing in recent years and calls for effective engaging policies, well-targeted in consideration of the heterogeneity of the social actors to be involved. In line with this challenge, the paper aims at providing a multi-perspective understanding of the perceptions of climate change. By relying on data from the eighth round of the European Social Survey (ESS8), types of individuals are defined based on a diversified set of socio-cultural factors, considered at the individual as well as at national level, that could be connected with the wide heterogeneity of beliefs, perceptions, behaviours and concerns related to climate change and to mitigation measures. Four types of individuals were identified: environmentalist, institutionalist, self-committed and skeptic. Our results show that individuals' environmental sensitivity can be associated with a wide variety of other factors and that groups of individuals defined on the basis of their environmental attitudes are strongly heterogeneous with respect to other domains of the social life in the diverse national contexts. These complex interplaying of diverse sources of heterogeneity are aspects that needs to be carefully taken into consideration when designing and implementing intervention aimed at facing the challenge of climate change by actively involved diverse stakeholders and the wider public.