Where Does an Individual’s Willingness to Act on Alleviating the Climate Crisis in Korea Arise from?

Abstract

Climate change is the result of anthropogenic activities and will lead to widespread and rapid changes on Earth in the following decades. The climate change crisis has led to economic, social, and cultural crises worldwide. This study analyzes the factors impacting the voluntary actions of individuals to mitigate the climate change crisis. Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire survey from 650 Korean adults. Statistical analysis was performed using the statistical program IBM SPSS Statistics 25. The results show that the factors affecting an individual’s willingness to act on climate change mitigation were gender, social class, perceived severity, perceived benefits, perceived obstacles, environmental attitude, and social exclusion. In particular, the results show that social exclusion had a moderating effect on the severity of the willingness to act on climate change mitigation. Regarding the moderating effect of social exclusion, significance was determined for gender, social class, perceived severity, perceived benefits, perceived obstacles, environmental attitude, and social exclusion (R2 = 0.617). The government should thus make efforts to reduce social exclusion in order to strengthen individuals’ willingness to act on climate change mitigation.