Activism and air pollution: Explaining changes in civil society mobilisation and policy

Poland has long been plagued by extremely high levels of air pollution, significantly due to the widespread use of fossil fuels for domestic heating and cooking. Popular awareness of this problem has increased considerably in recent years. The aim of this paper is to account for change over time in popular concern about air pollution and willingness to alter personal behaviour in order to address the problem, and to consider to what extent and why policy has changed. We test three competing hypotheses about the source of attitudinal change: objective change in the level of ambient air pollution, local civil society activism on this issue, and policies implemented by local and regional governments to address the problem. We also explore why, and to what extent, policy has been introduced to reduce air pollution. To this end, the analysis will employ a mixed-methods approach, combining results from a survey conducted for this research, along with survey data from the Eurobarometer and the European Social Survey covering the 2008-2021 period with quantitative ecological data on policies and pollution levels from official sources, and qualitative data from a focus group and a series of interviews conducted in 2020 and 2021 with policy-makers and activists working in this area.