Miljöengagemang i svensk kontext: En studie om varför volontärer väljer att engagera sig i miljöarbete och hur de ser på sitt egna engagemang

Abstract

Today the world is facing many environmental problems such as climate change, water pollution, deforestation and loss of biodiversity which demands action. Environmental work can be carried out on many levels and this study will focus on how these initiatives appear in environmental organizations. The aim of this study is to explore what motivates individuals to get involved in environmental volunteering work and how they perceive their possibilities to make a change. The study will use norms as a theoretical framework and will interconnect, climate anxiety, climate justice, strong and weak sustainability. To collect the data that is necessary for the analysis there will be interviews with volunteers from an environmental organization. The aim with the interviews is to get a deeper understanding of what role strong and weak sustainability, climate anxiety and climate justice may have in influencing their motivation to engage in environmental volunteering work. This study will focus on how these types of initiatives look like in the Swedish context. The result shows that a strong sustainability view has great importance in forming attitudes and motivating volunteers to take action in environmental work as well as climate anxiety. It can be concluded that climate justice did not have a significant role in why volunteers chose to engage in environmental work.