Christian Andreas Klöckner , Löfström Erica, Michael Brenner-Fliesser , Claudia Winkler, Viktoria Kofler, Eugenio De Gregorio , Giuseppe Carrus 

This paper builds on a model of individual and collective climate action on the neighbourhood level recently presented by Klöckner et al. [1]. In this model, types of local climate action were empirically categorized (diet, travel, protest, other climate actions) and it was found that both individual and collective intentions contribute to self-reported climate actions in these categories and that collective intentions were weaker than individual. Based on these findings, the current paper presents the results of an intervention study where a series of neighbourhood events in the same neighbourhoods as used for Klöckner et al. were implemented over the course of 9 months, aiming at strengthening the collective motivation to act against climate change in the neighbourhoods. These events comprised of hands-on work on contextualized climate action, experiential learning, and creative and disruptive communication techniques. The effects of these interventions were evaluated in seven European neighbourhoods with replicating key elements of the pre-intervention survey after the intervention series. In total, 46 respondents answered the survey both before and after the interventions, 13 of which were participants of at least one of the intervention events. Despite the small sample size, we find indications that the interventions were successful in increasing the perceived social norms in the neighbourhoods, the identification with the neighbourhoods, and decreasing perceived barriers to action. Smaller positive effects seem to occur for collective intentions and collective efficacy, and behaviour change. The individual factors appear to be mostly unaffected by the interventions, with potentially some improvement in individual efficacy. Overall, this study – while being partly inconclusive due to small sample size – points at the potential of neighbourhood-based climate interventions as a new methodology for activating a path to climate action underutilized in current campaigns. The preliminary findings we present here help generating studies to test them under more robust conditions.