How Do Values and Socio-Economic Status Shape Individual Climate Footprint? Evidence from Sweden, Combining Registry and Survey data

Household consumption accounts for the majority of global greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper we take a comprehensive approach to analysing how values and socio-economic factors shape individuals' climate footprint in Sweden. We employ a cutting-edge research design, building on the combination of high-quality population registry data and novel survey data. These data include register-based measures of car usage and housing as well as extensive survey measures of values and household consumption. This empirical approach allows us to advance the research front on how values and socio-economic standing impact climate footprint. Our data give us opportunities to estimate individual-level emissions by leveraging detailed register-based indicators, addressing typical measurement issues in survey data, such as social desirability bias. We use these extensive data to contrast how values shape low-impact and high-impact climate behaviour. We hypothesize that pro-environmental and climate-related values are more strongly connected to low-impact behaviour, whereas values regarding materialism and lifestyle choices are more impactful for high-impact behaviour. Compared to previous research, we apply a more nuanced approach to estimating the relationship between income and footprint, taking into account how consumption patterns differ depending on income. We also explore how climate policy preferences and knowledge condition the relationship between values and behaviour. Taken together, our findings shed new light on how values and socio-economic constraints interact in shaping individuals' climate footprint.