Odile Blanchard
 |
LABORATOIRE D’ECONOMIE DE LA PRODUCTION
ET DE L’INTEGRATION INTERNATIONALE
UMR 5252 CNRS - UPMF
Abstract
Climate change is definitely a huge challenge for the 21st century. Models in energy economics show that efficiency gains through energy productivity improvement, technical change and technological innovations towards lower carbon technologies will not be sufficient to achieve the ultimate objective of the UNFCCC, ie stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Mitigation actions that stem from individual behaviour change towards a lower individual carbon footprint are also part of the response to the climate challenge. However, barriers are numerous for individuals to change their behaviour and actually reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Even individuals with positive attitudes may show much reluctance to behave in a climate-friendly way : cognitive dissonance often emerges between people's statements and people's actual actions. The paper aims to investigate how these barriers can be overcome so that individuals take action. It draws on the climate-friendly initiative that has been carried out at Grenoble university for six years. The first part of the paper presents the university actors, and their mission in the initiative. The second part identifies the actors' main motivations and barriers to a climate-friendly behaviour. The third part discusses potential responses provided by various social sciences in order to address the barriers and remove them as much as possible. Digging alternatively into economics, sociology, psychology, or marketing is obviously not sufficient to entice behaviour change. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach drawing simultaneously on those social sciences may bring better results.
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