Themes of climate change agency: a qualitative study on how people construct agency in relation to climate change

Climate change presents a profound challenge to human agency, demanding recognition of humans as a destructive geophysical agent operating at vast time scales. This can prompt feelings of nonagency or paralysis, particularly amid debates over whether it is already too late to prevent dangerous climate change. The paper takes a detailed, qualitative look at how people construct positions of (non)agency—how they present themselves as agents of feeling, knowing, and doing—regarding climate change. It adopts a critical stance toward overly individualistic, rationalist perspectives common in behaviorally oriented climate psychology and seeks a wider understanding of agency that acknowledges collective discourses and socially embedded positions. Agency is approached discursively: not as a psychological attribute but as something constructed in interaction, encompassing both agency and nonagency attributions. The paper situates this view alongside related concepts such as efficacy (individual, collective, participative) and notes the limits of efficacy frameworks for capturing broader constructions of being able—or not—to act. It also reviews how public understandings of climate change are mediated, heterogeneous, and embedded in diminishing scientific authority, with dominant narratives like apocalypse constraining perceived agency and individualist lifestyle discourses emphasizing personal responsibility. Research on skepticism/denial shows people often present themselves as scientific and rational while crafting unscientific accounts, frequently tied to preferences for existing hierarchies and unequal systems. Additional literature addresses collective emotional and knowledge management (distancing), failures of imagination, and relational ontologies that challenge human-centric, autonomous notions of agency. The study asks: How do people construct their own (non)agency, or the (non)agency of humans in general, in relation to climate change? It proceeds with a discourse-analytic and thematic analysis of interviews to answer this question.

The paper integrates a broad, interdisciplinary literature within its introduction rather than a separate literature review section. Key strands include: (1) Definitions and framing of climate change and its public mediation, noting variability in perceptions, diminishing scientific authority, and dominant narratives like apocalypse and individual lifestyle solutions. (2) Concepts of agency and efficacy: traditional individualistic, intentional models; critiques of narrow capability-focused views; research on individual, collective, response, and participative efficacy; and the limitations of efficacy for capturing lived discursive constructions of being able or not. (3) Climate passivity and skepticism/denial: the rhetorical performance of being scientific and rational while disputing mainstream science; links to maintaining hierarchies and anti-egalitarian worldviews; social and emotional distancing from climate change; and failures of collective imagination. (4) Relational ontologies and new materialism: critiques of autonomous human agency and arguments for agency emerging from entanglements among humans, nonhumans, and processes, informing calls for climate education and communication that move beyond human-centric, individualistic notions. These bodies of work motivate a discourse-analytic approach to explore how people actually talk about, feel, and position themselves regarding climate action and nonaction.

Design: A qualitative, language-oriented study combining discourse analysis with Thematic Analysis (TA). Data collection: 28 semi-structured Zoom interviews (17 in English, 11 in Finnish). Recruitment via social media (Facebook, Reddit, LinkedIn), mailing lists of environmental organizations and university departments, and snowballing personal networks. Participants: Ages 21–83; 11 nationalities; 16 women and 12 men; four with professional climate backgrounds; some reported highly pro-environmental lifestyles. Ethical procedures: Informed consent obtained; transcripts available to participants upon request; ethical approval from Ghent University’s Faculty of Arts and Philosophy Ethics Committee. Interview protocol: Questions about the environment, nonhuman animals, climate change, and experiences with environment-related fiction. The first part used an environmental story (reported elsewhere). This study focuses on climate change discussions: meanings of climate change, human roles, and personal capacities for action. Some noted nonhuman factors; one participant denied anthropogenic warming and suggested an ice age threat. Transcription: Verbatim orthographic transcripts including all spoken words and sounds; analysis focused on portions explicitly or spontaneously discussing climate change. Analytical approach: Initial discourse-analytic reading identified discursive positions of (non)agency (verbal expressions with active verbs attributing ability/lack of ability to self or others regarding climate change). Coding proceeded inductively via TA (Braun & Clarke), with open coding of agency and nonagency positions at the clause/sentence level. Codes captured classes of (non)agency positions (e.g., “My own personal actions,” “My individual actions don’t matter in the big picture”). Coded extracts were grouped into broader themes representing patterns in how human (non)agency is constructed. Extracts could contain multiple codes; interviewer interjections were handled to preserve thematic integrity. Theme development: Iterative refinement checked coherence across data and literature. Final dataset: 351 extracts categorized into 12 agency themes. Validity considerations: Within qualitative TA, researcher reflexivity and transparent analytic procedures replace intercoder reliability; links to prior literature corroborated the constructs. Generalizability is limited; future work should test whether themes recur across contexts.

- Twelve broad themes of human (non)agency in relation to climate change were identified, grouped into three overarching discourse clusters: (1) Human concrete action in creating and solving climate change: Collective, Individual, Limited, Causing, Ambivalent, External. (2) Climate change as complex and requiring critical/mental action: Critical, Reflective. (3) Climate change influences human agency: Threatened, Experiential, Influenced, Benefitting. - Frequency highlights (N occurrences): Collective (58) most common; Individual (46); Critical (36); Threatened (35); Limited (34); Causing (32); Reflective (31); Ambivalent (29); Experiential (18); External (15); Influenced (14); Benefitting (3). - Theme characterizations: • Collective: Agency as acting together; individual actions framed as meaningful via aggregation and social influence (e.g., voting). Often lacked concrete pathways from individual acts to climate impact. • Individual: Emphasis on personal responsibility and lifestyle (e.g., carbon footprint, commuting choices), frequently tempered by admissions of limits (“doing what one can”). • Critical: Skeptical/doubting stance toward societal/media climate narratives; self-presentation as rational, scientific, and discerning; scientific rhetoric used while misrepresenting climate science. • Threatened: Climate change as overwhelming, apocalyptic, compromising human agency; urgency to act amid uncertainty about solutions. • Limited: Humans depicted as unable/unwilling to act at necessary scales; cultural consumption and individualism cited; sometimes argued humans too small to cause climate change. • Causing: Humans collectively responsible for creating climate change; often abstract attributions (e.g., destructive shaping of environment) without specific mechanisms. • Reflective: Agency as thinking, learning, imagining complexity; calls for “complexity thinking” beyond reductionist frames; roles for culture and figures like Greta Thunberg in prompting reflection. • Ambivalent: Conflict and paralysis; individual actions seen as negligible unless major actors change; feelings of guilt, hypocrisy, and uncertainty about effective actions. • Experiential: Personal sensing/observing climate change (e.g., feeling warming); direct experience used as evidence for/against belief in climate change; media exposure evoking despair. • External: Agency located in outside actors/systems (governments, business, science); individuals positioned as detached from loci of power/action. • Influenced: Climate change as prompting human adaptation and rethinking lifestyles, without detailed prescriptions; hints at mutual entanglement but rarely elaborated. • Benefitting: Acknowledgement (often hedged) of personal benefits (e.g., more work, milder weather), highlighting uneven impacts and complex facework around “winner” positions. - Cross-cutting observations: Participants combined multiple, sometimes contradictory themes within interviews. Agency talk was often vague or abstract (generic individual acts, externalized responsibility, or intellectualized stances). Climate skepticism predominantly appeared within Critical agency. Total analyzed extracts: 351.

Findings reveal a diverse repertoire of discursive positions that people use to make sense of their capacities and limitations regarding climate change. Participants often navigated contradictory stances—embracing individual action while doubting its impact (Ambivalent), or promoting collective action yet offering limited pathways from personal behavior to systemic change. The prevalence of Reflective and Critical themes suggests climate change is frequently approached as a mediated, cognitively demanding phenomenon rather than a locus of concrete, practical action. Agency constructions tended to be vague, externalized, or intellectualized, potentially reflecting emotional distancing. Human-centered framings dominated; only Influenced agency hinted at relational entanglements between humans and climate. Collective agency offered a sense of meaningfulness and social embeddedness, counterbalancing Individual and Ambivalent framings, yet explicit routes linking individual acts to collective outcomes were rare. Skeptical arguments surfaced mainly within Critical agency, where speakers positioned themselves as rational and scientific while disputing mainstream narratives; skepticism hinged on critiquing media/discourse rather than scientific consensus per se. Communication implications include: acknowledging and leveraging audiences’ critical self-presentation without dismissing it; helping distinguish the scientific phenomenon of climate change from its societal/media representations; fostering shared, concrete collective imaginaries that link individual experiences/actions to broader social and policy-level impacts; and enriching available discourses with relational ontologies that situate agency within human–nonhuman entanglements.

This study develops a 12-theme typology of discursively constructed (non)agency regarding climate change, demonstrating how people position themselves and others as feeling, knowing, and acting—or unable to act—in multifaceted ways. It highlights the dominance of Collective, Individual, Critical, and Threatened themes; the frequent vagueness and externalization of agency; and the human-centric nature of most constructions. Contributions include: (1) a granular, discourse-analytic account of climate agency beyond efficacy and individual behavior models; (2) identification of how skepticism is embedded in Critical agency performances; and (3) communication-oriented insights for linking individual and collective levels and for supporting critical audiences productively. Future research should examine the recurrence and variability of these themes across contexts and populations with diverse educational backgrounds; test narrative and communication interventions that emphasize specific agency routes (e.g., participative/collective pathways); and explore frameworks that foreground relational, more-than-human agency in public discourse and education.

Generalizability is limited due to the qualitative design, small sample (N=28), and relatively high educational level of participants. Themes were derived from interviews conducted in specific languages (English, Finnish) and contexts, which may shape discursive constructions. The analysis reflects researcher interpretation within a constructionist TA framework, and intercoder reliability was not employed. Further studies are needed to test whether the same codes and themes arise across different cultural, educational, and sociopolitical settings and to evaluate the effectiveness of theme-informed communication strategies.