Climate justice beliefs related to climate action and policy support around the world

The study investigates public awareness, understanding and endorsement of climate justice across diverse countries, and examines how climate justice beliefs relate to individual climate actions and support for mitigation policies. Although climate justice has become a prominent frame for climate communication and advocacy, there is limited knowledge about how well the public understands or endorses its core ideas and whether such beliefs motivate action. The authors situate climate justice within concerns about unequal contributions to, and impacts from, climate change, emphasizing distributional, procedural, and recognitional justice. The research aims to provide a robust, cross-national assessment of climate justice awareness and beliefs, and to evaluate their links with climate-related behaviors and policy support.

Prior work indicates low public familiarity with climate justice terminology despite some support once the concept is explained (e.g., in the United States). UK research finds awareness of global inequalities in climate vulnerability but limited understanding of links to racial and class inequalities. A survey of young Europeans showed many endorse related facts but cannot define climate justice, and economic dimensions are more recognized than racial or gender dimensions. Justice perceptions are known to influence cooperation and acceptance of climate policies, and activists often cite justice motives. However, justice frames can polarize audiences (e.g., along political lines in the UK) and may dampen motivation if perceived as complex or where structural inequalities benefit some groups. Individuals high in tolerance for inequality or social dominance tend to show lower pro-environmental motivation. Existing research has focused largely on Europe and North America, leaving generalizability to other regions unclear.

Design: Cross-national online survey of adults (18+) in 11 countries (Australia, Brazil, Germany, India, Japan, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Philippines, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States). Fieldwork: 26 May–30 June 2022 via Qualtrics Research Services with stratification by age and gender and a target of ~500 completes per country (total n = 5,627). Quality controls included an attention check, minimum completion time, and scrubbing for poor-quality responses. Measures: - Climate justice awareness: single item asking prior awareness of the term (yes/no, coded 1/0). - Self-rated climate justice knowledge: single item on a 4-point scale (0–3). - Climate Justice Beliefs Index (CJBI): nine items capturing beliefs about disproportionate impacts (poverty, women, Indigenous peoples and people of colour), need for greater voice for frontline communities, redistribution from wealthy to less wealthy, and roles of capitalism and colonialism; 4-point agree–disagree response with "don’t know" coded missing; averaged to a scale score. - Behaviors/outcomes: (a) Climate action (six yes/no items; averaged), (b) Online activism (four items, 1–5; averaged), (c) Private-sphere pro-environmental behaviors (PEB; six items, 1–5; averaged; two-factor structure identified), (d) Support for push policies (four items on taxing fossil fuels and carbon-intensive consumption and restrictions such as ICE car ban and frequent flyer levy; 1–4; averaged). Predictors and covariates: Age, gender (woman=1), education (university degree or higher=1), political orientation (0=far left to 10=far right), climate change informed (1–4), perceived personal experience of climate change (0/1), and frequency of information sources (television, radio, newspapers, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, books/magazines, scientific journals/blogs, family/friends) on 9-point frequency scales. Psychometrics: CJBI showed high reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) and a single-factor structure explaining 49.1% variance (KMO=0.93). Multigroup CFA supported configural and metric invariance across all 11 countries. Climate action, online activism, and push policy support scales showed single factors with good reliability and invariance; PEB showed a two-factor solution (PEB1: transport, influence others, second-hand purchasing; PEB2: avoid food waste, save energy) with good fit and metric invariance. Analytic strategy: Multilevel models (lme4) with random intercepts for country examined predictors of awareness, knowledge, and CJBI. Intraclass correlations indicated clustering by country (e.g., 8% variance for awareness, 14% knowledge, 4% CJBI). Relationships between CJBI and outcomes (climate action, online activism, PEB, and push policy support) were tested in mixed models controlling for age, gender, and education. Random slopes for CJBI by country were included where they improved fit: not significant for climate action (association did not vary across countries), significant for online activism, PEB, and policy support. Predictors were grand mean-centered; listwise deletion handled missing data from “don’t know” responses. Translation: Survey developed in English and translated (Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, German, Japanese) using translate–back-translate; presented in respondent’s local language. Ethical approval obtained (University of Nottingham School of Psychology REC, ref. F1344). Data and code available via OSF.

- Awareness and knowledge: Across all 11 countries, 66.2% had never heard of climate justice; 33.8% had heard of it. Only 17.2% reported knowing a fair amount or a lot. Awareness was highest in India (56.5%) and the UAE (49.2) and lowest in Japan (13.8%). - CJBI endorsement levels (global percentages agreeing): Poor people suffer worse effects (78.2%); frontline communities should have more say (77.6%); least responsible suffer most impacts (71.5%); climate change worsens existing inequalities (71.6%); climate change driven by exploitative systems like capitalism (69.9%); colonization and historical extraction significantly contributed (70.1%); redistribution from wealthy to those with less is required (67.3%). Lower endorsement for gender and racial dimensions: women worse affected (41.2% agree vs 42.0% disagree), worse impacts for Indigenous people and people of colour (57.2%). Cross-national variance in CJBI scores was low (≈4%), and mean scores indicated general support across countries. CJBI correlated positively with awareness and knowledge in all countries except Germany and Japan. - Predictors (multilevel models): Younger age associated with higher awareness; the 18–24 group reported lowest knowledge and lower CJBI than most older cohorts. No significant gender differences for awareness or CJBI; women reported slightly higher knowledge. Higher education positively associated with awareness, knowledge, and CJBI. Political orientation: right-leaning respondents reported higher knowledge but lower CJBI endorsement on average. Feeling informed about climate change positively predicted awareness, knowledge, and CJBI; personal experience of climate change positively predicted CJBI but not awareness or knowledge. - Information sources: Television use associated with lower awareness/knowledge; newspapers associated with higher awareness/knowledge. Facebook and Twitter use positively associated with awareness/knowledge; YouTube positively associated with knowledge and CJBI. Books/magazines and scientific journals/blogs associated with higher awareness/knowledge. Getting information from family and friends was positively associated with CJBI only. - Links to action and policy support (controlling for age, gender, education): CJBI positively predicted all outcomes—climate action (Estimate 0.12, 95% CI 0.11–0.14), online activism (0.70, 0.61–0.80), PEB (0.49, 0.42–0.55), and support for push policies (0.60, 0.51–0.69); all P<0.001. The CJBI–climate action relationship did not vary significantly across countries. Cross-national variation observed for other outcomes: CJBI–online activism was weaker in the Philippines and stronger in Australia, Brazil, and the United States; CJBI–PEB weaker in Nigeria and the Philippines but stronger in Australia, Japan, and the United States; CJBI–policy support weaker in India, the Netherlands, Nigeria, and the Philippines, and stronger in Australia, Brazil, the UK, and the United States.

Public awareness of the term climate justice is generally low, yet core climate justice beliefs are widely endorsed, particularly regarding unequal impacts, the importance of elevating frontline community voices, and the roles of colonialism and capitalism. Awareness and knowledge are higher in contexts with larger shares of university-educated respondents. The positive associations between climate justice beliefs and climate action, private behaviors, online activism, and support for mitigation policies suggest that justice-oriented frames can be effective motivators of engagement. These links tended to be stronger in high-emitting countries and in contexts where social inequality is politically salient, aligning with the idea that recognition of historical and contemporary inequities can spur pro-mitigation actions in developed nations. Conversely, weaker associations in some developing countries suggest that while people may be motivated to act on climate change, climate justice beliefs constitute a smaller component of their motivation, possibly reflecting differing self-perceptions (e.g., as victims versus beneficiaries or observers) and expectations about responsibility-sharing. Political polarization was evident: right-leaning individuals endorsed CJBI less, and items on gender and racial inequities elicited the lowest agreement, indicating potential reactance to culture-war-adjacent topics. Social and traditional media patterns point to the importance of information environments and interpersonal discussion in shaping justice-related beliefs.

This cross-national survey provides a robust assessment of public understanding and endorsement of climate justice and demonstrates that climate justice beliefs are common and meaningfully linked to climate action, pro-environmental behaviors, and support for ambitious mitigation policies across diverse contexts. The study contributes a validated Climate Justice Beliefs Index with cross-country invariance, documents demographic, ideological, experiential, and information-source correlates of awareness, knowledge, and beliefs, and maps how belief–behavior links vary geographically. Future research should: (1) employ more inclusive sampling strategies to capture perspectives of less-connected and highly vulnerable populations; (2) use experimental and longitudinal designs to assess causal pathways between justice beliefs and engagement; and (3) examine how different foci of justice beliefs (local vs global, gender/race vs economic dimensions) influence actions and policy preferences across sociopolitical contexts.

- Sampling and representativeness: Online, digitally connected samples are not fully representative and may underrepresent less privileged, highly climate-vulnerable groups. - Causality: Cross-sectional design precludes causal inference about the effects of climate justice beliefs on actions and policy support. - Context specificity: Climate justice has varying histories and discourses across regions; generalization of specific focus areas (e.g., local vs global injustices) may be limited and warrants context-sensitive investigation.