The German Longitudinal Environmental Study (GLEN)

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Katrin Auspurg; Professor Dr. Henning Best; Dr. Christiane Bozoyan; Professor Dr. Andreas Diekmann; Dr. Claudia Schmiedeberg
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 533957184

Climate change and the depletion of the Earth’s natural resources are among the largest challenges humanity currently faces. In light of this, the planned German Longitudinal Environmental Study (GLEN) aims at investigating the incentives, restrictions, attitudes, and beliefs that underlie human-environment interactions. In doing so, the GLEN aims to provide a foundation for evidence-based environmental policy assessments and guidance. The project will build up a large-scale panel study of the adult German population in which the same individuals will be repeatedly observed over time using a standardized and stable survey instrument. Due to its longitudinal design and the linkage of the collected survey data to geospatial information on respondents’ social and ecological environments, the panel will be well suited to analyzing natural experiments such as regional policy measures (e.g., price changes, information campaigns) and exposure to local environmental conditions (e.g., extreme weather events). In addition, the panel will be used as a platform for survey experiments to investigate trade-offs in environmental preferences, consumption decisions, and the acceptance of environmental technologies and policies. With this design, the GLEN will meet the urgent need for data suitable for causal research and simulations in the environmental social sciences. With regular refreshment samples, it will allow for the continuous monitoring of trends in environmental concern and behavior, while also considering diverse social, political, economic, and psychological aspects. Accordingly, the GLEN is primarily understood as a data infrastructure for environmental research across all social science disciplines. Key questions that can be addressed with the data include: What influences environmental concern, behavior, and the acceptance of technologies and policies to protect the environment? What consequences do environmental policies and changing environments have for social inequalities, and how does that affect (perceived) environmental justice? As a long-term project, the GLEN will cover the period between 2024 and 2035, and thus the period in which decisive policy measures to replace fossil fuels are set to be implemented in accordance with international agreements. In sum, the project includes three work streams to pursue three closely related goals: (I) First and foremost, the project will generate a data infrastructure for the environmental social sciences, not only in the German context, but also internationally. (II) The project will use the data for substantive environmental social science research. (III) The project will provide evidence-based policy evaluations and guidance with regular trend reports and embedded experiments.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants