High Awareness, Limited Action: Explaining Attitudinal Barriers to Climate Mitigation in Academia

Tamara Ben Ari, Julien Troiville , Lydiane Agier 

General support for climate action is widely expressed within academia and public research, with surveys consistently reporting exceptionally high levels of awareness and concern about the climate crisis. Yet, the implementation of mitigation policies in universities and research institutions remains limited.
Drawing on a national survey of 4,688 academics and research personnel in France, we examine this apparent paradox and find that more than half express attitudinal barriers to climate action, including reluctance toward the inclusion of academia in mitigation efforts, opposition to institutional mitigation policies, and inconsistencies between stated support for mitigation and willingness to adopt corresponding changes in individual research practices.
Higher perceived costs of academic mitigation actions—particularly their potential impacts on competitiveness and scientific visibility—are consistently associated with these barriers, along with lower agreement with degrowth as a response to environmental challenges. Such barriers are also more prevalent among senior male scientists with higher levels of mobility, particularly in physics, chemistry, and medical and health sciences.
Academia provides a critical context to examine how climate inaction can persist in the near absence of climate denial. Our findings suggest that moving from stated commitments to effective action requires addressing how climate policies interact with academic hierarchies and dominant models of productivity and recognition—an issue with direct implications for the design of mitigation policies within research institutions.