Sustainable Behavior in Climate Pledges: An Analysis of Top Emitters’ Strategies

This Working Paper is part of Next Generation NDCs, National Climate Action and International Climate Action within Climate. Reach out to Mindy Hernandez for more information.

This working paper provides the first analysis exploring how countries are considering behavior change within their NDCs. We first outline nine of the most impactful behavior changes, or "Priority Practices," based on the research literature. These are behavior changes with the greatest potential to decrease GHG emissions within the food, mobility, and energy sectors. Next, we evaluate how countries' NDCs outline concrete actions to shift these behaviors.

We categorize existing actions into three broad groups according to the type of behavior change tool used: enhanced and personalized information; incentives (e.g., monetary or nonmonetary rewards); and improving the decision-making context (e.g., changing how choices are presented, removing barriers to desired behaviors, or altering the physical or built environment that surrounds an individual).

This paper is relevant to national governments, policymakers, academics, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that are working to increase the ambition of NDCs, as well as those working to promote effective behavioral climate policies.

Key Findings:

We find that only three Priority Practices (of nine identified) are consistently included in at least half of the 20 highest-emitting countries' NDCs. These are in the mobility and energy sectors. They include encouraging electric or hybrid vehicle purchases, increasing the use of public transport to replace travel using gasoline or diesel vehicles, and reducing household energy use by insulating homes or switching to energy-efficient appliances. See Figure ES-1 for a country-by-country breakdown of policies, plans, actions, and targets in relation to each Priority Practice.

We find that the Priority Practices included in NDCs do not always align with the emissions reduction potential of candidate behavior changes. For example, while changing food-related behaviors can yield some of the highest GHG emissions reductions (including policies to reduce consumer food waste and support the adoption of sustainable diets), these changes are considered least frequently in NDCs.

NDCs most commonly promote behavior change by improving infrastructure and services-which can be powerful-but countries are not leveraging other tools like incentives or personalized information provision. For example, many countries plan to install electric vehicle charging stations to encourage adoption, but fewer mention providing tax breaks for purchasing electric cars. Only two of the nations included in our analysis mention using a combination of all three tools to shift behavior toward increased electric or hybrid vehicle use (e.g., building charging infrastructure and offering incentives on electric and hybrid vehicles and developing energy-efficient certification of vehicles to inform consumers about fuel efficiency).

_{Thumbnail image by Bernard Spragg. NZ/Flickr}