Climate literacy and the perception of climate-sustainability in the Nordic countries

Abstract Climate change mitigation requires the globally most affluent to make serious lifestyle changes to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Climate literacy, as the practical understanding of personal climate impacts and requirements to take action, has been proposed to engage the public more to climate mitigation practices. In this study, with survey data (~ 3,500 respondents) from five Nordic countries, we analyze the relationship between climate literacy and the perceptions of the climate-sustainability of one’s lifestyles, consumption, and living conditions. Furthermore, we examine how participation in different pro-climate actions affect climate-sustainability perceptions. Our results show that despite most respondents acknowledging anthropogenic climate change (92%), their high standard of living often leads to high climate impact. Respondents with higher perceived climate knowledge tend to view their lifestyle and consumption as more climate-sustainable, suggesting that they are less critical of their own high-impact behaviors, such as flying. In addition, climate communication positively, albeit weakly, correlates with higher perception of climate-sustainable consumption. However, more frequent climate thinking is associated with more critical assessments of one’s lifestyle and living conditions. Interestingly, recycling has the strongest effect among the pro-climate actions, whereas, for example, reducing flying has almost no effect. Overall, these findings underscore that different aspects of climate literacy, knowledge, thinking, and communication influence perceived climate-sustainability in sometimes opposing ways, indicating that simply improving literacy does not straightforwardly translate into more consistent self-assessments of climate-sustainable behavior. Moreover, the pro-climate action effects imply that the climate literacy of the respondents, in terms of understanding about the climate impacts of one’s consumption and behavioral choices, does not necessarily translate into a robust connection between actions and resulting impacts.