Torsten Masson

Interactions between citizen responsibilization, flood experience and household resilience: insights from the 2013 flood in Germany

Abstract As increasing emphasis is placed on the importance of citizens’ taking responsibility for their own preparedness and protection against flooding, it is important to understand the relationship between responsibility and action and how current practices of responsibilization influence household resilience. Based on a survey of 889 households affected by flooding in 2013 in the states of Saxony and Bavaria, Germany, this study investigates the relationship between action and flood experience and how this experience influences whether citizens feel responsible, and therefore the likelihood that they will take action in the future. These findings have implications for household resilience as well as future research.

A Social Identity Model of Pro-Environmental Action (SIMPEA).

Large-scale environmental crises are genuinely collective phenomena: they usually result from collective, rather than personal, behavior and how they are cognitively represented and appraised is determined by collectively shared interpretations (e.g., differing across ideological groups) and based on concern for collectives (e.g., humankind, future generations) rather than for individuals. Nevertheless, pro-environmental action has been primarily investigated as a personal decision-making process. We complement this research with a social identity perspective on pro-environmental action. Social identity is the human capacity to define the self in terms of “We” instead of “I,” enabling people to think and act as collectives, which should be crucial given personal insufficiency to appraise and effectively respond to environmental crises. We propose a Social Identity Model of Pro-Environmental Action (SIMPEA) of how social identity processes affect both appraisal of and behavioral responses to large-scale environmental crises. We review related and pertinent research providing initial evidence for the role of 4 social identity processes hypothesized in SIMPEA. Specifically, we propose that ingroup identification, ingroup norms and goals, and collective efficacy determine environmental appraisals as well as both private and public sphere environmental action. These processes are driven by personal and collective emotions and motivations that arise from environmental appraisal and operate on both a deliberate and automatic processing level. Finally, we discuss SIMPEA’s implications for the research agenda in environmental and social psychology and for interventions fostering pro-environmental action.

A Capability Approach to Intergenerational Justice? Examining the Potential of Amartya Sen's Ethics with Regard to Intergenerational Issues

Abstract The idea of intergenerational justice has practical consequences, not least because it is linked to the politically influential, wide-ranging concept of sustainable development. It also bears on several philosophical puzzles arising in the context of intergenerational justice. They need to be solved in order to establish a case for intergenerational obligations of justice. In this paper we shall examine Amartya Sens capability approach in the light of these questions. In developing an account of human development, Sens capability approach suggests a conception of some aspects of intragenerational justice, but not of intergenerational justice itself. This paper aims to close this gap in two steps: first, it identifies necessary elements of a theory of justice; second, and subsequently, it examines how successful the capability approach is in providing these elements.

Bürgerenergiegesellschaften in Deutschland

Die Transformation des Energiesystems in Deutschland ist durch eine hohe Akteursvielfalt gekennzeichnet. Genaue Zahlen hierzu gibt es allerdings nicht, allenfalls Schatzungen fur den Anteil unterschiedlicher Akteursgruppen an der installierten Leistung von Erneuerbare-Energien-Anlagen (siehe Abschnitt 2.1). Im Erneuerbare- Energien-Gesetz (EEG) von 2014 ist Akteursvielfalt als ein Ziel aufgenommen worden (§ 2 Abs. 5 Satz 3 EEG 2014).

Closing ranks: Ingroup norm conformity as a subtle response to threatening climate change:

We tested the hypothesis that climate change threat increases group-based cognition and action tendencies. As ingroups can provide extended primary control, we expected climate change threat to increase conformity with ingroup norms and group protective behavior. In three studies (N = 404), we experimentally manipulated climate change threat (Studies 1–3) and group norm content (Studies 2 and 3). We found that participants under climate change threat more strongly derogated group members who acted against the group’s interests (Study 1). When a specific group norm was made salient, both manipulated (Study 3) and perceived climate change threat (Studies 2 and 3) increased ingroup norm conformity. Importantly, this effect occurred for norms of radical left-wing behavior. This suggests that climate change threat does not necessarily induce a conservative shift. Instead, it elicits group-based defenses whose expression depends on which ingroup and which of its norms are salient.

Collective self-fulfilling prophecies: group identification biases perceptions of environmental group norms among high identifiers

Abstract Previous research has shown that ingroup norms influence intentions to engage in pro-environmental behavior, most notably for individuals highly identified with a group. However, intriguingly, identification may itself lead people to exaggerate descriptive pro-environmental ingroup norms to enhance positive distinctiveness of their ingroup. We investigated this possibility in two studies together with the assumption that perceived norms would mediate the effects of identification on intentions to engage in pro-environmental behavior. The results support our assumptions and show that high identifiers perceived their ingroup be more eco-friendly, which in turn increased respondents’ intentions to behave in a pro-environmental manner. We discuss the implications of this collective self-fulfilling prophecy for social identity theorizing and the prediction of pro-environmental behavior.

Künftige Freiheiten schützen

Der Capability-Ansatz stellt substanzielle individuelle Freiheiten als Ziel nachhaltiger Entwicklung in den Mittelpunkt der Analyse. Diese konkrete Sichtweise ist nicht ohne Probleme, bietet aber auch Chancen. So relativiert der Ansatz die beliebte Diskussion um die starke oder schwache Nachhaltigkeit.