Climate change: Scottish National Adaptation Plan 2024-2029

Annex C – Approach to climate adaptation behaviours

What are adaptation behaviours?

Climate adaptation requires a change in how people and communities act now, to avoid damaging consequences in the future. These actions, or ‘adaptation behaviours’, are undertaken by actors across society, including individuals and their households, communities, and businesses. Critically, adaptation behaviours do not rely solely on individual actions: to adapt to a changing climate, Scotland needs localised, collective action.

Adaptation behaviours typically serve four purposes (CCC, 2020):

• hazard reduction or avoidance – such as housing developers avoiding construction on flood prone areas;
• vulnerability reduction – such as farmers planting drought-resilient crops;
• preparedness for response – such as homeowners preparing a household emergency kit;
• preparedness for recovery – such as businesses purchasing flood insurance.

‘Coping during crisis’ can also be regarded as a type of adaptation behaviour – such as evacuating during times of extreme rainfall. As can ‘democratic involvement or civic action’ – such as volunteering to maintain a community garden, or participating in a townhall meeting about a Local Place Plan.

The factors which have been found to be most influential on an individual’s uptake of adaptation behaviours are: their sense of self-efficacy; their sense of the action’s outcome efficacy; the social norms they live within; and their direct past experience of extreme weather events (Valkengoed and Steg, 2019).

Why is it important to target adaptation behaviours?

Behavioural change plays a critical role in enabling the uptake of actions that can protect individuals and businesses from direct threats such as floods, droughts, heatwaves, or other natural disasters (CAST, 2023) as well as building collective resilience to climate change. For example, by assessing the factors influencing people's behaviours in relation to heat risks, we can design heat risk management approaches that can more effectively target better change behaviour and attitudes (McLaughlin et al., 2023).

Research shows that most people in Scotland had either already taken, or are likely to take, at least one action to help adapt to climate change impacts in future (Ipsos, 2022). However, the actions most likely to be taken relate to supporting and helping other people, rather than making physical changes to properties. For instance, installing flood resilience measures represent climate-adaption actions that people are least likely to take (Ibid.).

It is important that the policies in the Adaptation Plan focus on adaptation behaviours in order to address the barriers to their uptake. These barriers cannot be overcome through infrastructure investments or service provision alone.

They require nuanced behavioural interventions at a neighbourhood level, which earn public buy-in and trust.

The behavioural barriers of particular importance include low awareness, limited self-efficacy, and prohibitive costs:

• Low awareness: We know that awareness of climate adaptation, and of the actions needed to be taken, are low across the Scottish public (CAST, 2023). Despite the threat of extreme weather events, these risks can still seem abstract and lower priority – as demonstrated in the Adaptation Plan consultation -resulting in the perception that they will have limited personal impact. There is further confusion (also observed in the consultation) between climate change adaptation and mitigation, and the respective demands of each.
• Limited self-efficacy: Many respondents to the draft Adaptation Plan consultation were sceptical that individual adaptation efforts would have any impact – particularly against the backdrop of other countries’ inaction on climate mitigation. Others believed that they were already doing all they can.
• Prohibitive costs: The draft Adaptation Plan consultation shows that financial barriers are significant and inhibiting action to make, for example, property modifications.

It is also important that policies in the Adaptation Plan work to counter maladaptive behaviours: that is, adaptation actions which may provide benefits for one household or organisation, but which have negative impacts on others. This is a crucial issue of. social justice.

Alongside these challenges, there is also positive momentum to build on through the Adaptation Plan. The Adaptation Plan consultation illuminated willingness among respondents to consider sustainable solutions to upgrade and protect housing, for example, and to improve garden spaces. Respondents were also interested in community solutions to motivate adaptation efforts, such as community projects, volunteering, and knowledge exchanges.

Finally, there are opportunities to leverage the co-benefits of adaptation action. The UK’s third Climate Change Risk Assessment highlights the co-benefits of responding to key risks through behaviour change – for example, creating and maintaining a climate-resilient garden which contributes to reducing the risk of localised flooding offers people the opportunity to increase their wellbeing by spending more time outside with nature. The Scottish Government will aim to raise awareness of these behavioural co-benefits, and thus to spark action.

How will Scottish Government target adaptation behaviours through the Adaptation Plan?

Research and insights

At the core of the Scottish Government’s approach to enabling adaptation behaviours is a systematic effort to capture the lived experiences of communities around Scotland. This enables us to understand the obstacles that people encounter, and to identify factors likely to facilitate change.

Behavioural models

The Scottish Government uses behavioural science to apply these insights to the design of policy interventions. We use two behavioural models in particular:

• The ‘COM-B’ model (Michie et al, 2011), to dissect the ‘Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation’ barriers and enablers to the uptake of each adaptation behaviour;
• The Behaviour Change Wheel (Michie et al, 2011), to appraise the policy levers available to target each adaptation behaviour, and to evaluate the balance of levers we are using to target that behaviour.

In this way, we take a people-centred approach to adaptation: combining the principles of behaviour change with behavioural insights from individuals and communities across Scotland.

Adaptation Plan Commitments

The Adaptation Plan commits Scottish Government and other key players to actively encourage and create the enabling environment for Scotland’s successful adaptation to the changing climate. However, a number of these commitments will rely to some extent on individuals and communities across Scotland making positive changes to their behaviour. Below, is a non-exhaustive summary of commitments within the Adaptation Plan that have been identified as requiring an element of individual and/or community behaviour change, alongside the associated change.

It is worth noting that the policy levers which consultation respondents felt would best enable them to take action were: resilient infrastructure; guidance and regulation (especially on building resilient homes); community engagement and initiatives; and communications to raise awareness and boost motivation to act. On the latter, Scottish Government will continue to deliver on the vision set out in the Public Engagement Strategy for Climate Change, that people actively participate in shaping just, fair and inclusive policies that promote mitigation of and adaptation to climate change.

Focus on neighbourhood

The benefits of targeting behavioural interventions at neighbourhoods are numerous. A focus on neighbourhood helps to localise adaptation behaviours, and so to counter the “not my place” attitude where people feel detached from the immediacy of the climate emergency. Motivation to adopt adaptation behaviours is also intensified by community feeling, which can improve people’s self-efficacy and outcome-efficacy. For some marginalised groups – such as people with disabilities, or in minority ethnic groups – engaging with communities of identity, rather than place, is important for supporting their efficacy.

Giving space for community voices is important for building trust, and creating governance which is inclusive, transparent and accountable. Community engagement can illuminate local knowledge about problematic areas in a given neighbourhood, creating the capacity to turn that knowledge into actionable data and strategies.

In appraising the policy levers available to drive adaptation behaviours, Scottish Government will systematically explore opportunities for neighbourhoods to shape and implement interventions. We will seek to empower neighbourhoods, working towards a society where climate resilience is the norm.