Operationalizing Climate Boundaries

Abstract

The report presents the core methodology for Work Package 4 (WP4) within CIDAPE. It outlines a research strategy aimed at understanding how interpretations of climate change influence people’s self-perceptions and climate boundaries across four different European countries: Slovakia, Spain, Austria, and Norway. Our research employs a comparative framework that encompasses the diverse compositions of North, South, East, and West Europe, promising a robust analysis of varied socioeconomic impacts on climate orientations. Further, this report details the sampling strategy that will be used in all four cases to recruit individuals for interviews and, subsequently, for focus group discussions. We justify our sampling approach, grounded in relevant sociological literature, by adopting a scheme based on class differences that will allow us to systematically reflect how climate boundaries are articulated against the background of diverse socio-economic landscapes in each of our four cases. This approach is designed to probe the interaction between national contexts and individual climate change perceptions, which will allow us to explore how these differences shape public and private attitudes and orientations towards how society copes with the climate crisis.