Perceived impacts of the Fridays for Future climate movement on environmental concern and behaviour in Switzerland

Abstract

Calling for increased action on climate change, Fridays for Future (FFF) quickly gained momentum around the world and became highly visible through strikes and protests in more than 150 countries. Considering its scale and magnitude, questions about the impact of this newly emerging climate movement arise. This article is based on a survey investigating the perception of Swiss residents (N = 1206) of how the FFF movement and Greta Thunberg’s climate activism changed their environmental awareness and behaviour. We found that the Swiss public by and large perceives Greta Thunberg and the FFF movement positively, and a considerable share of participants report that Greta Thunberg (30%) and the FFF activism (23%), respectively, positively influenced their environmental concern and behaviour. Structural equation modelling revealed that the strength of the behaviour change motivation depended mainly on how a participant evaluated the FFF movement and Greta Thunberg. The latter was influenced positively by general environmental attitudes, and education level and negatively by the acceptance of justifications for environmentally harmful behaviours. Participants reported environmentally positive changes most frequently in private sphere behaviours, particularly in the domains of mobility, consumption and waste, whereas few changes in public sphere behaviour were reported. Next to increased awareness and motivation gains, also the reinforcement of existing pro-environmental behaviour was reported. Although the influence on sympathisers was stronger, some of those sceptical of the climate strike movement also reported behaviour changes, indicating that the unconvinced have to some extent been reached.

The perceived potential of religion in mitigating climate change and how this is being realized in Germany and Switzerland

“…In the case of Switzerland, current temperatures have risen considerably faster than the global average (NCCS 2023 ), with a noticeable and visible to the eye effect on glacier decline (10% decrease in the past 2 years (Horton and reporter 2023 ; GLAMOS 2023 )). In addition, the impact of social movements such as Fridays for Future have been substantial with a recent study indicating that environmental concern and behaviour have been positively influenced with behavior changes reported even among those that are sceptical of the climate change movement (Fritz et al 2023 ). In the case of Germany, the catastrophic flooding in 2021 had a noticeable effect on votes in favor of climate progressive parties (Garside and Zhai 2022 ), and the Green Party’s share of votes increased from 8.8% in 2017 to 14.8% in 2021 indicating broader societal tendencies towards increased environmentalism.…”

Towards a Common Methodology and Modelling Tool for 100% Renewable Energy Analysis: A Review

“…The discourse among the general populace is particularly intense regarding the non-homogenous global population growth changes in countries, increasing energy developments in developing countries, economic ramifications, and advantages associated with the transition process. The public and political discourse regarding the implications of the ratified Paris Agreement remained relatively limited until additional political pressure was exerted, notably through initiatives such as the Fridays for Future movement (FFF), supported by Scientists for Future [55]. In line with the FFF, additional scholarly investigations have been disseminated, which expand upon preceding research endeavours such as the regional collaborative studies as in [11,12,35,47,56] and studies in the major global emitters of CO 2 such as China [36,57,58], the USA [42,46], India [44], Japan [33,43], Iran [48], Germany [41,47,59], Indonesia [39], Canada [60,61], South Korea [62], and Saudi Arabia [50,51].…”

Climate change impacts on snow avalanche risk in alpine regions

“…A phenomenon of our time in the context of progressing climate change illustrating the urgency is: Especially since the last few years young people in various groups of activists such as "Fridays for Future" (Fritz et al, 2023) or the "Last Generation" (Seljenes, 2021) are organizing themselves to demonstrate or to disrupt through civil disobedience, to speed up the implementation of political solutions and climate change mitigation policies. With their actions, they contribute to the medial and political discourse on climate change and draw attention to the long overdue measures and political implementation.…”