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Understanding the sometimes turbulent relationship between behaviour change, policy making and campaigning on climate change and net zero.
As countless analyses have shown, individual behaviours matter for reducing carbon emissions.
For those with high carbon footprints – which are driven by wealth and disposable income – reducing per capita emissions from lifestyle choices is an essential part of the low-carbon transition. The carbon footprints of the top 10%, 5% and especially 1% of earners matter in-and-of themselves.
But perhaps because of the skewed distribution of consumption emissions, the idea of individuals making choices to adjust or moderate their own behaviours remains controversial. Governments are instinctively nervous about being accused of over-reach, or of covertly attempting to influence people’s decisions.
Some of the earliest campaigns to raise awareness of climate change with the public focused on ‘simple and painless’ steps that people could take, but in equating these changes with the magnitude of the challenge of climate change, arguably trivialised the nature of the challenge. At the same time, there is evidence of oil and gas companies using the concept of individual carbon footprints to distract attention from the systemic causes of climate change – i.e. their extraction of fossil fuels in the first place.
Systemic changes and behavioural changes are not mutually exclusive – and can instead be considered ‘two sides of the same coin’. But there is a strong critique of focusing on individual carbon footprints from within the climate movement – arguing that the focus should be kept on the root causes of the problem (i.e. fossil fuels, not the decisions people make in their own lives).
People are ‘agents of change’ across the breadth of their lives: as peers, colleagues, decision makers and voters. Crucially, emissions reductions from those with the freedom and means to adjust their lifestyles send a powerful social signal that change is possible and responsibility will be fairly shared.
Much of the path to net zero now involves securing the buy-in of the general public, including willingness to change behaviours. Across diet, travel and energy use, there are differing levels of support for behavioural change.
Although food choices are closely linked to people’s identities, and there have been attempts to cultivate ‘culture war’ debates around the prospect of taxation on meat, in fact there is generally more support than opposition for shifting diets among the UK population.
For those who fly regularly, though, there is less evidence that habits or attitudes are shifting. So the idea of ‘behaviour change’ (like the wider net zero conversation) is something that is grounded in specific situations and conditions.
What matters is not only the willingness people indicate to change their own behaviours but also their capacity/ability to make changes (many people do not need to reduce the amount they fly, for example, because they already fly infrequently) and the factors that sit behind individual behaviour choices: people’s values, their sense of identity and the social cues they receive from friends and peers around them.
Resources like Britain Talks Climate (based on the varying ‘core beliefs’ that different ‘Britain’s Choice’ audience segments hold) provide the sort of nuanced guidance required for behavioural campaigns to land effectively: there is no one-size-fits-all message on shifting behaviours on the path to net zero.
New data from the spring 2026 wave of the DESNZ Public Attitudes Tracker shows that 1 in 10 owner occupiers have already installed solar panels on their home and a further 57% say they would definitely or probably do so in the next few years. This presents an increase from 52% who said the same in spring 2025 but is still slightly below peak values in spring 2023.
When asked about the main reasons for considering solar, those who were likely to install them listed cutting electricity bills (83%), the renewable nature of the technology (72%) and reduced dependence on the electricity grid (51%).
Among owner occupiers who were unlikely to install solar panels, the main reasons for not considering the technology were the installation being too expensive (55%) and the payback taking too long (53%).
When asked what would encourage them to consider getting solar, 3 in 4 owner-occupiers named better financial support for installation (75%), followed by a guarantee scheme to cover any faults or damage (50%) and better financial incentives to sell excess electricity back to the grid (44%). These three incentives remain unchanged as top 3 since spring 2024, emphasising that the high outlay cost remains the largest barrier for those eligible to install solar on their homes.
New data from the spring 2026 wave of the DESNZ Public Attitudes Tracker shows owner-occupiers are now more likely to say they already have or are likely to install a heat pump when they next need to change their heating system or boiler.
26% now say they have either already installed an air source heat pump or are very or fairly likely to install one when their heating system next needs upgrading. This is up 6 percentage points from the winter 2021 baseline and equals the previous peak from spring 2025. Change appears to be largely driven by fewer people saying they don’t know enough about the heating technology, now at 21%, which equals values in spring and summer 2025 but is down from 39% in winter 2021.
The share of owner-occupiers who say they are likely to install a ground source heat pump is lower, though an uptick from summer and winter 2025 is also observable here: 17% say they either already have or are very or fairly likely to install the technology next time their heating system needs upgrading, close to the highest point of 18% from spring 2025.
New research has revealed that politicians visibly ‘leading by example’ can substantially increase the willingness of members of the UK public to adopt further low-carbon lifestyle changes.
The study looked at over a thousand people’s responses to the examples of ‘high-profile individuals’ in a nationally representative survey. It found that the vast majority (86%) wanted to see politicians, celebrities and business leaders setting a good example in terms of their climate actions. Citizens were also more willing to adopt low-carbon actions, such as flying less, eating less meat, or driving an electric car if they saw leaders doing the same. At the same time, people’s overall approval of leaders who were setting a strong example improved.
Despite this, further investigation showed that politicians may currently be reluctant to publicise their personal climate-friendly actions due to fear of criticism for virtue signaling, or hypocrisy.
Together the work suggests that rather than pulling off ‘green stunts’, politicians’ consistency of action over time is crucial, and it can also be beneficial if they acknowledge that some changes may be too difficult or costly for everyone to make (such as buying an electric car or installing a heat pump).