Who Is Most Responsible for the Mitigation of Climate Change? An Intercultural Study in Central Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East

Researchers observed that even if one’s environmental concern was high, people would delegate others to take responsibility for climate change mitigation and undertake sustainable actions. In this study, we explored how citizens of different countries in Central Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East perceived responsibility for mitigating and reducing climate change consequences of various collective and individual agents. Also, we asked about the role of cultural values, environmental worldviews and beliefs in the intractability of climate change in the prediction of the responsibility distribution. The total sample consisted of N = 1267 participants from Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan. We created the list of 11 collective and individual entities as accountable for mitigation and sustainable activities. We used the Collindex scale to measure collectivistic and individualistic values, the NEP scale to measure anthropocentric and ecocentric worldviews, and two questions concerning the intractability beliefs. Results showed that participants attributed more responsibility to collective agents than to individuals across countries. The predictors’ patterns indicated that ecocentric worldviews consistently increased perceived responsibility of both collective and individual actors, whereas anthropocentrism reduced the attribution of collectives’ responsibility. Collectivistic values appeared to foster greater expectations of individuals. Also, differences between national samples were observed.