1. Introduction
The so-called Earth Overshoot Day has moved up by two months over the past 20 years, (although this increasing tendency was reversed by the COVID-19 pandemic by more than three weeks) [
1]. A resource-efficient Europe, which would have huge impact on CO
2 emission, can only be achieved with “a policy mix that optimizes synergies and addresses trade-offs between different areas and policies” [
2]. Thus, local authorities, citizens, and other stakeholders need a collaborative and science-informed decision environment. Within the “whole picture”, climate change is a global problem that requires collective responses and solutions in order to significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions throughout the world. A research examining perceptions of climate change came to the conclusion already in the 1990s that residents of both economically developed and underdeveloped countries are rather concerned about the state of the environment [
3]. However, it may also be said that in addition to the generally observable concern, significant differences may be seen between countries in terms of the various dimensions of attitudes [
4].
As a consequence of all these characteristics, it is not surprising that the problem of collective action soon came into the focus of scientific and political interest as a key issue in environmental affairs and the reduction of climate change [
5,
6,
7]. However, while there is unanimous scientific consensus on the existence of climate change and its obvious negative effects (e.g., the increasing frequency and severity of heat waves across the globe [
7]), with even public opinion treating these effects as evident in many cases, the efforts taken by average citizens in the interest of reducing climate change are nowhere near sufficient [
6]. The strained contradiction between the increased concern for the state of the environment and the more limited level of individual action has been investigated by numerous empirical studies in recent years [
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13]. The problem with this contradiction, especially with this limited level of action, is that it hampers obtaining a clear picture for decision making, therefore the transition towards a more environmentally friendly/sustainable (e.g., circular, low carbon) economy [
14].
To date, trust has appeared less strikingly in research in connection with climate change, but raising the subject is far from being without precedent. On the conceptual level, trust is mentioned as a generative feature for identifying environmental problems, as well as an element of the causal background influencing the subjects’ actions/reflections given to these challenges [
8,
15]. In recent years, several studies have also undertaken to empirically investigate the role of trust [
4,
11,
13,
16,
17]. These latter papers each dealt with the effect of trust in relation to an individual special dimension of the attitude to climate change (e.g., concern—behavior gap, policy support).
The results published to date call attention to that a high level of social trust (in other words interpersonal generalized trust, i.e., trust in “unknown others”) and of institutional trust may both promote committed thinking about and concern for environmental problems taking the form of actual action.
Accordingly, several studies have examined the relationship of the various forms of trust with environmental attitudes [
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14], actions, and public policy support, but our knowledge is still fragmentary. It is partly due to the limited thematic focus as these studies generally only touch upon a single, special dimension of attitudes to environmental problems and climate change. On the other hand, it should be noted that these inquiries are characterized by a large degree of one-sidedness in their empirical approach to trust. Both these deficiencies can be partly explained by the lack of available databases, as obviously the diverse domains of attitude to environmental problems and, in the same way, the measurement of trust only appear in a limited and, perhaps, under-sophisticated way in large international comparative surveys.
Furthermore, it is also important to raise the issue of the necessity for differentiating the macro-micro perspective. Many comparative studies call attention to the fact that significant inconsistencies and discrepancies may be perceived between different societies in the various dimensions of attitude to climate change, and that the causal background that influence these individual attitudes may also differ from country to country [
11,
13,
16,
18,
19,
20,
21,
22].
The objective of this study is to expand and verify the existing knowledge on the relationships between generalized trust and attitudes to climate change. In the interest of this, after outlining the theoretical bases, the characteristics of the different dimensions of attitude to climate change in numerous European countries, and the investigation on the patterns of the internal relationships of these dimensions, are presented. Following this, as the central issue of the paper, the relationships between generalized trust and climate attitude on the level of the individual and of European societies are examined in a comprehensive way. In order to respond to the aforementioned knowledge gap, the paper focuses on the following three dimensions:
Climate change beliefs—climate concern;
Personal responsibility in connection with the reduction of climate change;
Support of policy measures in connection with climate change.
The paper is organized as follows. The next section outlines the conceptual framework for the research, building on climate attitude and trust literature. Afterwards, the methodology used is discussed. In the fourth section, territorial aspects of climate attitude and the spatial relations of climate attitude and trust are discussed. The concluding section offers a summary of the key findings of the research and their contribution to the literature.
3. Materials and Methods
3.1. Data
The current paper uses the database of round 8 of the European Social Survey (ESS). Since 2001, this international and representative comparative survey has been providing various data every two years on the demographic characteristics of European societies, their political and public life preferences, and on their characteristic values, perceptions, concepts, and attitudes.
Data collection—used in this article—performed in 2016 included a module that was specifically aimed at determining the attitudes of European citizens in connection with climate change. This detailed survey makes it possible to approach the subject of climate change from multiple sides, to consider various of its dimensions, and measure these as possible with diverse variables. With the use of this round of the ESS, in addition to detailed climate variables, this investigation is able to appropriately measure generalized trust (items of trust are core elements of the questionnaire), which is of key importance from the aspect of the focus of this study. In the course of ESS 8 survey, 44,387 respondents in the following 23 countries were interviewed: Austria (n = 2010), Belgium (n = 1766), Czech Republic (n = 2269), Estonia (n = 2019), Finland (n = 1925), France (n = 2070), Germany (n = 2852), Hungary (n = 1614), Iceland (n = 880), Ireland (n = 2757), Israel (n = 2557), Italy (n = 2626), Lithuania (n = 2122), Netherlands (n = 1681), Norway (n = 1545), Poland (n = 1694), Portugal (n = 1270), Russian Federation (n = 2430), Slovenia (n = 1307), Spain (n = 1958), Sweden (n = 1551), Switzerland (n = 1525), United Kingdom (n = 1959). In this analysis, Israel, as a non-European country, is excluded.
The special module of ESS used in this article is designed to achieve four specific objectives [
15]:
Creating a comprehensive theoretically grounded cross-European dataset of public attitudes to climate change, energy security, and energy preferences;
Getting insights about how national-level socio-political, economic, and environmental factors shape public attitudes to energy and climate change across Europe;
Examining the role of socio-political values and other individual-level factors in European attitudes to energy and climate change;
Examining the relative importance of both individual-motivational factors and national circumstances in public preferences for different energy supply sources and demand reduction.
The conceptual framework of the ESS module [
15] comprises five components, covering the broad areas of (1) socio-political values and engagement; (2) beliefs about climate change; (3) concerns about climate change and energy security; (4) personal norms and efficacy beliefs; and (5) energy preferences, including preferences for energy supply sources and energy demand measures. The present study distinguishes certain items from these ESS modular components into three core dimensions. These are (1) beliefs in connection with the fact of climate change and climate concern, (2) personal responsibility in connection with the reduction of climate change, and (3) support of policy in connection with climate change.
3.2. Beliefs in Connection with the Fact of Climate Change and Climate Concern
The 2016 ESS survey is aimed at understanding the ideas of the respondents about the reality of climate change, its possible causes, and about the severity of the situation. The latter might indicate the climate skeptic thinking [
52]. The “trend skeptic” approach denies the existence of the global warming tendency; according to the “attribute skeptic” concept, warming is not caused by human activity; and according to the “effect skeptic” view, warming has no real damaging consequences.
Concern about climate change is a phenomenon tightly linked to the above. Concern reflects on how much someone is afraid of climate change or how much they feel it to be a serious threat. Yet, it still differs in that while the aspects dealt with above are of a cognitive nature, concern may be viewed as more affective [
15].
The question relating to attitude to the existence of climate change is the following: “You may have heard the idea that the world’s climate is changing due to increases in temperature over the past 100 years. What is your personal opinion on this? Do you think the world’s climate is changing?” Respondents have four different answer options (that are used as trend variables): (1) “Definitely changing”; (2) “Probably changing”; (3) “Probably not changing”; (4) “Definitely not changing”.
The precise text of the question in the questionnaire examining views in connection with the causes is: “Do you think that climate change is caused by natural processes, human activity, or both?” The responses (used as attribute variables): (1)—“Entirely by natural processes”; (2)—“Mainly by natural processes”; (3)—“About equally by natural processes and human activity”; (4)—“Mainly by human activity”; (5)—“Entirely by human activity”. Apart from these, the question includes a further response option for respondents denying the fact of climate change: “I don’t think climate change is happening”.
Then, the question dealing with the impact of climate change is as follows: “How good or bad do you think the impact of climate change will be on people across the world?” Respondents may express their opinions on a scale of 0 to 10 (used as impact variables), where 0 means “Extremely bad”, and 10 means “Extremely good”.
Finally, the question relating to climate concern is as follows: “How worried are you about climate change?” The answers may be placed on a scale of 1 to 5 (used here as concern variables), where 1 means “Not at all worried”, and 5 means “Extremely worried”.
3.3. Personal Responsibility in Connection with the Reduction of Climate Change
After the cognitive and affective attitude in connection with climate change, the next phase examines the extent to which the role of the individual appears in connection with the collective problem of climate change. The question of undertaking responsibility belongs to the scope of moral commitment and norms. Although the existence of moral commitment and norms does not automatically mean action too, they are in a direct connection with it [
15]. The ESS climate change module uses the following question to examine environment awareness norms: “To what extent do you feel a personal responsibility to try to reduce climate change?” Respondents have a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 means “Not at all”, and 10 means “A great deal”.
3.4. Support of Policy in Connection with Climate Change
In our study, the last dimension of attitude to climate change is represented by the issue of policy. This aspect in environmental research is usually categorized in the scope of “non-activist public sector behaviors” [
15,
38]. Activist activity is viewed as direct participation in actions influencing public policy decision making, while non-activist activity makes reference to less explicit activities and relates more to the judgment of public policy. The ESS climate module attempts to survey these opinions in one block of questions using three different variables, which are as follows: “To what extent are you in favor or against the following policies in [country] to reduce climate change?” (1) Increasing taxes on fossil fuels, such as oil, gas and coal. (2) Using public money to subsidize renewable energy such as wind and solar power. (3) A law banning the sale of the least energy efficient household appliances. The options in the case of each answer: 1—“Strongly in favor”; (2)—“Somewhat in favor”; (3)—“Neither in favor nor against”; (4)—“Somewhat against”; (5)—“Strongly against”.
3.5. Trust
The empirical investigation of generalized trust has a history spanning many decades and has a correspondingly serious research background with significant results. Very frequently, the empirical studies dealing with trust use one single “classical” questionnaire item (more details in Uslaner and Algan and Cahuc [
51,
53]) to operationalize trust. This also takes place in those works in which the issue of trust appears in relation to environmental problems and climate change. In the case of these, it may be said that almost without exception, the authors prefer the sole use of the standard question. Nevertheless, it must be mentioned that criticisms in literature dealing with the measurement of trust are widespread [
54,
55,
56,
57,
58,
59,
60,
61], according to which the standard trust variable is, in itself, not necessarily capable of identifying the phenomenon of generalized trust. Another version, consisting of three questions, the so-called “trust scale” [
51] tries to reflect on these criticisms. This measuring tool makes reference to three content aspects: Reliability, fairness, and helpfulness. The ESS surveys contain all three items of the trust scale. Respondents may answer all three using a scale of 0 to 10. The trust scale questions are the following:
“Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted, or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?” (0—“You can’t be too careful”; 10—“Most people can be trusted”).
“Do you think that most people would try to take advantage of you if they got the chance, or would they try to be fair?” (0—“Most people would try to take advantage of me”; 10—“Most people would try to be fair”).
“Would you say that most of the time people try to be helpful or that they are mostly looking out for themselves?” (0—“People mostly look out for themselves”; 10—“People mostly try to be helpful”).
Trust was measured between fellow human beings with the average of the answers given to these three items. Those answers were taken into account as high level of trust which achieved a value of at least 6 on the basis of the average of the three variables. Members of the respondent group achieving less than 6 were classed in the low trust category.
3.6. Sociodemographic Variables
It is obvious that many other factors may have an impact on one’s attitude to climate change in addition to the role of trust. As it is already explained in the introduction, previous empirical papers had identified the effects of certain sociodemographic variables. On the basis of these, the following control variables were built into the analysis at the level of the individual:
Gender (1 = male, 2 = female).
Age (four age groups were created: 1 = 16–29 years, 2 = 30–44 years, 3 = 45–64 years, 4= over 65 years).
Education (1 = up to elementary school, 2 = secondary qualification, 3 = higher education qualification).
Income (0 = finding it difficult on present income, 1 = living comfortably on present income).
Although the ESS does include the respondents’ answers relating to the total income of the household categorized in deciles, another variable that relates to subjective, experienced financial circumstances has been used. The reason was the high proportion of no response in the individual countries. This item sounds as follows: “Which of the descriptions on this card comes closest to how you feel about your household’s income nowadays?” The original response categories were the following: 1 = Living comfortably on present income, 2 = Coping on present income, 3 = Finding it difficult on present income, 4 = Finding it very difficult on present income. During the analysis, the four response categories into two was consolidated.
3.7. Analytical Methods
In the following section, the variables used in the analysis are examined. As a first step, a descriptive inquiry of the selected items presents crucial differences among European societies in terms of attitude to climate change and trust. At the macro level, the rest of the paper examines the concordance among the selected variables by using the national average values, while binary logistic regression models are applied to grasp the effect of trust on attitudes to climate change at the level of the individual. The paper uses the general form of logistic regression as
follows:
Below, three different models will be presented that only differ in terms of their dependent variables while the independent variable (trust) and the control variables (sociodemographic variables) are the same in all cases. Dependent variables are formulated as follows: The composite indicator of ideas in connection with the fact of climate change and climate concern; the variable of personal responsibility in connection with the reduction of climate change; and the composite indicator of the support of policy measures in connection with climate change. The models were run separately on the samples of all European countries in the survey. The effect of trust on the dependent variables is interpreted by using the odds ratios.
5. Conclusions
As a result of the analysis of the data originating from the ESS, a diverse picture may be drawn of European societies on the basis of the various dimensions of climate attitude. Almost everywhere the majority of the population accepts the scientific evidence of climate change and, in parallel with this, they are seriously concerned about it. At the same time, it must be mentioned that climate skepticism is very clearly characteristic of Central and Eastern European societies. In the case of personal responsibility and policy support, the paper revealed relevant differences. In Central and Eastern Europe, in both dimensions, the values of the indicators are significantly lower than the rest of the continent, while in Southern Europe, this may only be observed in the case of policy support.
The focus of this study was the clarification of the relationships between climate attitude and trust. In summary, it is only partly confirmable that trust has direct effects on climate attitude both on the micro and macro level. It may be seen that on the level of the individual, concern about the negative effects of climate change displays no relationship with trust. Furthermore, in the case of the support of policy measures, the investigation found a significant effect in just some of the examined countries. However, trust has a clearly important role in the feeling of personal responsibility. At the macro level, the level of concern about the negative effects of climate change per country shows no relationship with trust, however the feeling of personal responsibility and support of policy measures do. In the final part of the analysis it was presented, that climate concern is more likely to lead to concrete action at society-level (feeling of personal responsibility, support for policy measures) in countries with a high culture of trust than in mistrusting societies.
This paper contributes to the literature, first, by revisiting the framings for the relationship between climate attitude and trust. Additionally, the methodology used and the choice of indicators may act as an analytical framework for further investigations for revealing relationships between other pro-environmental attitudes and trust.
Besides, this paper provides an analytical framework for further investigations between other domains of pro-environmental (such as circular economy) attitude and trust. Although the umbrella project of this investigation addressed the diverse circumstances of circular economy (H2020 REPAiR project), here climate attitude is used to examine the correlation between pro-environmental ideational framings/praxes and trust. Since circular economy is not yet operationalized sufficiently, the methodology presented here, as an analytical framework, may be seen as a novel attempt for further clarifications and improvements. Based on previous results of the REPAiR project (published in working papers [
22]), the current paper proposed a (1) coherent theoretical argument, (2) a concept-grounded prism for item-typology of pro-environmental attitude, as well as (3) a multilayered framework of methods for examination of the presumed micro- and macro-level linkages.