Public Perceptions concerning Responsibility for Climate Change Adaptation

Erik Persson, Åsa Knaggård and Kerstin Eriksson
Additional contact information
Erik Persson: Department of Philosophy, Lund University, SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden
Åsa Knaggård: Department of Political Science, Lund University, SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden
Kerstin Eriksson: Division Safety and Transport, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, SE-223 70 Lund, Sweden

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 22, 1-23

Abstract: For successful climate change adaptation, the distribution of responsibility within society is an important question. While the literature highlights the need for involving both public and private actors, little is still known of how citizens perceive their own and others’ responsibility, let alone the moral groundings for such perceptions. In this paper, we report the results of a survey regarding people’s attitudes towards different ways of distributing responsibility for climate change adaptation. The survey was distributed to citizens in six Swedish municipalities and completed by 510 respondents. A large number of respondents wanted to assign responsibility for making decisions about and implementing adaptation measures to local governments, but also to property owners, whereas the national government was raised as responsible for setting decision boundaries and for financial support. The most preferred principles for a fair distribution of responsibility among the respondents were desert, ability, efficiency and need, while the principle of equal shares found less support. All principles received some support, indicating that it is necessary to consider several principles when distributing responsibility for climate change adaptation. Compared to earlier studies, this study shows more nuanced perceptions on who should be responsible and on what moral grounds.

Keywords: climate change adaptation; distribution principles; public perception; responsibility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/22/12552/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/22/12552/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:22:p:12552-:d:678551

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().