Against all odds: Mobilization for large-scale collective action in the case of climate change

The development of modern society has introduced complex problems like controlling pandemics, migration challenges, antibiotic resistance, and climate change. These are large-scale issues that require collective action. However, little attention has been paid to how groups even recognize these problems as collective challenges and decide to address them. This dissertation explores how collective action groups form, how issues like climate change become recognized, and how policy areas emerge.
Using the example of international climate change policy, which gained global attention in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the study looks at how this issue moved from being primarily scientific to a major political concern. By examining case studies, it shows that while some aspects of climate change policy follow traditional theories of collective action, such as political opportunities and interests, other behavioral factors, notably the availability heuristic, the representativeness heuristic, and the framing effect, play a role in shaping large-scale cooperation.
The findings suggest that, to fully understand how societies mobilize around big problems like climate change, we need to consider how people’s behaviors and perceptions influence collective action. Although this research doesn’t answer all the questions about large-scale collective action, it highlights the importance of studying how societal mobilization starts and evolves on crucial global issues.