Can neighbourhood interventions strengthen collective climate action?

This paper builds on a model of individual and collective climate action on the neighbourhood level recently presented by Klöckner et al. [1]. In this model, types of local climate action were empirically categorized (diet, travel, protest, other climate actions), and it was found that both individual and collective intentions contribute to self-reported climate actions in these categories and that collective intentions were weaker than individual intentions. Based on these findings, the current paper proposes a theoretically derived intervention strategy based on neighbourhood events. These events comprised hands-on work on contextualized climate action, experiential learning, and creative and disruptive communication techniques, aiming at strengthening the collective motivation to act against climate change in the neighbourhoods. The interventions were implemented in nine European neighbourhoods, and we were able to collect some first data on their potential in a survey in seven of the nine neighbourhoods. In total, 46 respondents answered the survey both before and after the interventions, 13 of whom participated in at least one of the intervention events. With this explorative small sample, we find indications that the interventions might be successful in increasing the perceived social norms in the neighbourhoods, the identification with the neighbourhoods, and decreasing perceived barriers to action. Smaller positive effects seem to occur for collective intentions and collective efficacy, and behaviour change. The individual factors appear to be mostly unaffected by the interventions, with potentially some improvement in individual efficacy. Overall, this pilot study points to the potential of neighbourhood-based climate interventions as a new methodology for activating a path to climate action underutilized in current campaigns. The preliminary findings we present here help generate studies to test them under more robust conditions and present a methodology for innovative intervention design.