Social tipping processes towards climate action: A conceptual framework

Multidimensional partisanship shapes climate policy support and behaviours

“…Although there are limits to the extent to which individual or household-level behavioural change can reduce societal-level emissions, we suggest that further research should attend to how to engender behavioural adaptation 47 and encourage behaviours in a non-partisan way. For example, recent research has focused on identifying social tipping (or positive tipping) mechanisms 48 which can be further expanded to explore how minimizing partisan differences can remove barriers to action, and creating more 'critical conditions' for rapid societal transformations 49 . Furthermore, future research could further explore the limited partisan differences in climate mitigating behaviours, as this could be a manifestation of the well-known attitude-behaviour gap 10 .…”

Incorporating human behaviour into Earth system modelling

“…The development of SCMs will contribute to addressing difficult problems in understanding climate change and achieving a sustainable Earth system through the representation of human behaviour, system-level effects of social processes and the complex dynamics driven by social environmental feedbacks 10 . SCMs can improve insight into the dynamics of the Earth system and may lead to the identification of potential social tipping points, where reinforcing feedbacks within the human system and through interactions with the climate system can lead to large reductions in anthropogenic forcing of climate 81,139,140 , analogous to regime shifts in ecological systems 141,142 . In short, humans are the primary driver of current climate change, and so we need to put humans into the equation.…”

Multi-dimensional partisanship shapes climate policy support and behaviors

“…Although there are limits to the extent to which individual or household-level behavioral change can reduce societal-level emissions, we suggest that further research should attend to how to engender behavioral adaptation [47], and to encourage behaviors in a nonpartisan way. For example, recent research has focused on identifying social tipping (or positive tipping) mechanisms [48] which can be further expanded to explore how minimizing partisan differences can remove barriers to action, and creating more 'critical conditions' for rapid, societal transformations [49]. Furthermore, future research could further explore the limited partisan differences in climate mitigating behaviors, as this might could a manifestation of the well-known attitude-behavior gap [10].…”