Exploring barriers to climate action among concerned Americans 

Hello everyone! I’m Yema Conteh, a soon to be 2nd Year Ph.D. student in the Department of Psychology at USC. I’m co-mentored by Dr. Joe Árvai, the director of the Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies, and Dr. Wändi Bruine de Bruin. My research is primarily focused on understanding how individuals think and address climate change and sustainability challenges. My primary goal with my research is to develop communication materials to help promote collective efforts to propel action to respond to our changing climate. I’m very grateful to be a Wrigley fellow this summer and work on research that can help tackle the people side of how to respond to climate change. 

Climate change is a human-caused problem, and because of this, we as humans need to pave the way and engage in robust efforts to slow down emissions to reduce the harmful effects it has on people and the natural environment. We’re at a time when various actors, such as the government, corporations, and scientists are working towards using their power to reduce climate change. This can be seen with the house recently passing the Inflation Reduction Act which includes pivotal climate change legislation, organizations like Microsoft committing to climate negativity by 2030, and even the other Wrigley fellows whose research is focused on ways to reduce CO2 emissions through carbon recycling. Individuals are also making waves, and this can be seen by groups like the Sunrise Movement who are raising awareness and using their collective voice to advocate for equitable climate action. In addition, most Americans are concerned about climate change.

However, even with these strides, more work needs to be done at an individual level to reduce CO2 levels and change our current systems that perpetuate climate change. The United States is still one of the top emitters, and one of the biggest culprits of CO2 emissions is transportation. One way to reduce emissions would be to target the transportation sector, however, only 17% of Americans are using alternative forms of transportation when traveling to work. Thus, my summer research has focused on developing a project that aims to understand the barriers to climate action among American Adults. 

Over the past few months, I have worked with my advisors and my lab mate, Lauren Lutzke, on developing survey materials to understand the social and psychological barriers to climate action among American Adults who are concerned about climate change. In our study, we’re defining climate action as behaviors people can take to reduce their emissions, such as taking the bus or eating less meat, as well as engaging in political behavior like protesting, which can help with advocating for climate policy. We’re targeting concerned adults as they may be the group who would most likely engage in action. Some of the barriers may be because of one’s perception of social norms, feelings of hope, their perceptions of their or group’s (such as the government) capability to respond to climate change or aspects such as income. Based on the results from the research, we can move forward and work on additional projects that aim at creating communication materials that target the barriers that could be helpful to both individuals and policymakers. Overall, I’m so thankful to be able to conduct this research and I would like to thank the Wrigley Institute for their support with the summer fellowship.