People underestimate the personal carbon footprints of the richest members of society, and overestimate those of the poorest, new research from Copenhagen Business School, the University of Basel, and the University of Cambridge, co-funded by Quadrature Climate Foundation, has shown.

For the study, published this week in Nature Climate Change, researchers surveyed 4,000 people from Denmark, India, Nigeria and the United States about their perceptions of the personal carbon footprints of their fellow citizens.  The researchers were based at Copenhagen Business School, University of Basel, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, and Murdoch University.

The study participants were asked to estimate the average personal carbon footprints of people across three income groups (the lowest 50%, the highest 10%, and the highest 1% of income) within their own countries. Most participants overestimated the average personal carbon footprint for the lowest 50% of income and underestimated the average footprints for the highest 10% and 1% of income.

Participants from the top 10% were more likely to support climate policies, such as increasing the price of electricity during peak periods, taxing red meat consumption or subsidising carbon dioxide removal technologies such as carbon capture and storage.

The researchers say that this may reflect generally higher education levels among high earners, a greater ability to absorb price-based policies or a stronger preference for technological solutions to the climate crisis.

Greg De Temmerman, Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Chief Science Officer at Quadrature Climate Foundation, said: “This is impactful research that shows we have further to go in helping people understand the inequalities of climate change – not just how climate change impacts people inequitably but also how its drivers are unbalanced across our societies.

“While it is important for people to have a realistic sense of their personal emissions footprint, it is even more important that people support climate policies so that we can deliver systemic changes to end our reliance of fossil fuels and slow the rate of planetary warming.

“I am pleased Quadrature Climate Foundation has been able to support this robust scientific research.”

The researchers also looked at whether people’s ideas of carbon footprint inequality were related to their support for different climate policies. They found that Danish and Nigerian participants who underestimated carbon footprint inequality were generally less supportive of climate policies. They also found that Indian participants from the top 10% were generally more supportive of climate policies.

After learning about the actual carbon footprint inequality, most participants found it slightly unfair, with those in Denmark and the United States finding it the most unfair. However, people from the top 10% generally found the inequality fairer than the general population, except in India.

The research chose the four countries for their different per-capita carbon emissions and their levels of economic inequality. Around 1,000 participants were surveyed in each country. Half of each participant group came from the richest 10% of their country and the other half from the poorest 90%.

Quadrature Climate Foundation is an independent charitable foundation. It takes a science-led approach to identifying and investing in solutions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, remove greenhouse gases, and respond effectively to climate impacts.

Since launching in 2019, QCF has committed more than US$1 billion to more than 180 organisations in 17 countries, advancing climate solutions around the world.

‘Underestimation of personal carbon footprint inequality in four diverse countries’ by Kristian S Nielsen et al was published in Nature Climate Change (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-024-02130-y.