Household Climate Action: A Review of Behavioural, Social, Structural and Systems Perspectives and a Way to Connect Them

Pro-environmental behaviour is central to reducing emissions from household energy use, housing, mobility and consumption. Yet willingness to act does not necessarily translate into lower-carbon practices: what households can do also depends on social influences, infrastructure, affordability, institutional arrangements, and wider systems of provision. This paper reviews behavioural, social, structural and systems perspectives on household climate mitigation, develops a framework for connecting them, and advances five testable propositions. The framework comprises four complementary dimensions: individual agency and decision-making; social processes through which practices are interpreted, diffused and normalised; structural conditions that shape and distribute opportunities for action; and wider systems of provision that influence how households live and act. Rather than proposing a new theory of behaviour or causal model, the framework helps explain how these dimensions interact around particular household practices and where relationships may be enabling, reinforcing, constraining or counteracting. It then connects these relationships to policy design, governance and implementation. The challenge is not just persuading households to take climate action, but creating the conditions that enable all households to be able to do so.