 Time’s Up? How Temporal Maps of Climate Change Shape Climate ActionIoana Sendroiu, Amalia à lvarez-Benjumea and Fabian Winter American Sociological Review, 2025, vol. 90, issue 2, 171-194 Abstract: We track how temporal mappings of climate change relate to individuals’ actions to address the climate crisis. We consider multiple aspects of temporal maps and so make two innovations over the literature to date. First, we examine how individuals coordinate their actions across both their own expectations of the future (first-order futures) and their sense of others’ expectations (second-order futures). Second, we examine past effects of climate change, as well as the turning points past which respondents believe climate change can no longer be addressed. We show how both everyday actions, such as recycling, and political behaviors, such as protesting, are coordinated across these temporal maps, conceptualized as beliefs about past, present, and future, and the turning points across them. A core finding is that individuals’ own concern about the climate future is associated with increased climate action, whereas believing others to be concerned depreciates individuals’ own climate action. This study is therefore a conceptual contribution to understanding action and temporality, while also providing empirical insight into how individuals navigate the climate crisis. Keywords: climate change; temporality; action (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:amsocr:v:90:y:2025:i:2:p:171-194 DOI: 10.1177/00031224251320103 Access Statistics for this article More articles in American Sociological Review |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.