Climate change is often discussed in terms of global policies, technological breakthroughs, or international agreements. But an important piece of the puzzle lies much closer to home: our everyday behaviours.

What we eat, how we travel, what we buy, and how we engage with climate issues all contribute—directly or indirectly—to greenhouse gas emissions. Yet surprisingly, researchers have lacked a reliable way to measure how much people actually engage in climate-friendly behaviours.

In our new preprint, we introduce CLIMBS — the Climate Mitigation Behaviour Scale, a scientifically developed tool designed to measure everyday actions that help reduce climate change.

Why Do We Need a New Measure?

Many existing surveys ask people about “environmental behaviour” in general. These often include actions like recycling or nature conservation. While important, not all environmental behaviours have the same impact on climate change.

Research shows that some individual actions—such as reducing car use, shifting diets, or avoiding high-carbon consumption—can make a much larger difference to emissions than others.

We therefore asked a simple question:

“Can we measure behaviours that specifically matter for climate mitigation?“

CLIMBS was created to answer that question.

What Is CLIMBS?

CLIMBS is a questionnaire that captures how often people engage in climate-relevant behaviours across four key areas:

• Mobility — transport choices such as cycling, public transport, or car use
• Food — dietary habits including meat reduction or plant-based eating
• Consumption — buying habits, repairing, reusing, and financial choices
• Engagement — talking about climate change, donating, or participating in collective action

Instead of asking abstract questions about attitudes or intentions, CLIMBS focuses on concrete, everyday actions.

The goal is simple: measure what people actually do, not only what they believe.

How We Developed the Scale

Creating a scientifically reliable measure takes more than writing good questions.

We started with an established environmental behaviour framework and carefully adapted it to focus only on behaviours linked to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Experts in psychology, climate science, and sustainability reviewed the items to ensure they reflected real mitigation impact.

The scale was then tested with 694 adults in Sweden, allowing us to examine how well the questions worked statistically and whether they truly measured a meaningful underlying behaviour pattern.

What Did We Find?

One of the most interesting findings was that climate-friendly actions appear to share a common core.

People who frequently engage in one mitigation behaviour are also more likely to engage in others. In other words, there seems to be a general “climate mitigation tendency” underlying different lifestyle choices.

At the same time, the four domains—mobility, food, consumption, and engagement—remain useful for understanding how individuals express that tendency.

We also found that CLIMBS scores were strongly related to:

• interest in sustainability,
• perceived knowledge about climate issues,
• self-reported sustainable lifestyles, and
• concern about climate change.

Importantly, mitigation behaviour showed little difference across age or gender, suggesting climate action is not confined to a particular demographic group.

A Short Version for Real-World Research

Because long questionnaires are not always practical, we also developed CLIMBS-8, an eight-item short form.

Despite being much shorter, it closely captures the same overall behavioural pattern as the full scale, making it suitable for large surveys, policy evaluations, or intervention studies where time is limited.

Why This Matters

To promote climate action effectively, we first need to measure it accurately.

CLIMBS provides researchers, policymakers, and organisations with a tool to:

• track changes in climate-friendly behaviour,
• evaluate behavioural interventions,
• understand differences between populations, and
• study how individual actions interact with structural conditions like infrastructure or policy.

In short, it helps move the conversation from “What do people think about climate change?” to “What do people actually do?”

Looking Ahead

This study is an important first step, but more work remains. Future research will test how well CLIMBS predicts real-world emissions, how it works across countries and cultures, and how sensitive it is to behavioural change over time.

Understanding human behaviour is essential for climate mitigation—and better measurement is a key part of that effort.

Reference and full text link to the pre-print

Lenhard, F., Fernández de la Cruz, L., Axelsson, K., Nerini, F. F., & Mataix-Cols, D. (2026). The Climate Mitigation Behaviour Scale (CLIMBS) – Development and psychometric evaluation (76mdg_v1). PsyArXiv. https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/76mdg_v1/