Selected Publications
The Moral Power of Youth Climate Activists - Transforming International Climate Politics?, 2022, working paper on SocArXiv with Nicole Nisbett.
Youth Climate Activists are an important norm entrepreneur as humanity is increasingly awakening to the realities of accelerating climate change. They push for seeing climate change not merely through cost-benefit analysis frames but through frames of multiple climate justices and our responsibility to protect the most vulnerable, including our own children, against the unfolding climate crisis. But how successful have these activists been in shifting perspectives in the context of international climate politics, where often the fundamental parameters are set for national climate politics? Here we computationally investigate to what extent the normative framework advanced by this movement is increasingly penetrating the international public climate debate, changing arguments, priorities, and frames used at international climate policy negotiations hosted by UNFCCC and we investigate the key actors pushing for normative change. We find that indeed the normative framework advanced by the movement has successfully penetrated the discourse around UNFCCC and that youth climate activists were able gain support from norm champions furthering their cause and further contributing to the diffusion of their normative framework. We also find that their normative framework is slowly starting to spread among government actors.
Youth Climate Activists are an important norm entrepreneur as humanity is increasingly awakening to the realities of accelerating climate change. They push for seeing climate change not merely through cost-benefit analysis frames but through frames of multiple climate justices and our responsibility to protect the most vulnerable, including our own children, against the unfolding climate crisis. But how successful have these activists been in shifting perspectives in the context of international climate politics, where often the fundamental parameters are set for national climate politics? Here we computationally investigate to what extent the normative framework advanced by this movement is increasingly penetrating the international public climate debate, changing arguments, priorities, and frames used at international climate policy negotiations hosted by UNFCCC and we investigate the key actors pushing for normative change. We find that indeed the normative framework advanced by the movement has successfully penetrated the discourse around UNFCCC and that youth climate activists were able gain support from norm champions furthering their cause and further contributing to the diffusion of their normative framework. We also find that their normative framework is slowly starting to spread among government actors.
Climate Change Threat and Authoritarianism: Initial Experimental Evidence and Open Questions, 2022, working paper on PsyArXiv with Kris Dunn, Penelope Milner and Joseph Moore.
There is increasing evidence that climate change and the threat it poses may increase authoritarian tendencies within populations, contributing to increasing polarization and blocked climate change action. However, the mechanisms for these effects are still underexplored. In this study, we conduct a survey experiment (N=570) to better understand the connections between authoritarian predispositions, authoritarian attitudes, climate change threat, anger about climate change, and climate change response behaviour. We find that: 1. individuals with authoritarian predispositions who are exposed to climate change
threat become more authoritarian, while those with libertarian predispositions become less authoritarian; 2. exposure to climate change threat makes people angrier, which motivates action to mitigate climate change; and 3. authoritarian attitudes are negatively related to anger and climate change action. This indicates that climate change threat can motivate positive action to mitigate climate change but at the expense of making authoritarians more intolerant and punitive.
There is increasing evidence that climate change and the threat it poses may increase authoritarian tendencies within populations, contributing to increasing polarization and blocked climate change action. However, the mechanisms for these effects are still underexplored. In this study, we conduct a survey experiment (N=570) to better understand the connections between authoritarian predispositions, authoritarian attitudes, climate change threat, anger about climate change, and climate change response behaviour. We find that: 1. individuals with authoritarian predispositions who are exposed to climate change
threat become more authoritarian, while those with libertarian predispositions become less authoritarian; 2. exposure to climate change threat makes people angrier, which motivates action to mitigate climate change; and 3. authoritarian attitudes are negatively related to anger and climate change action. This indicates that climate change threat can motivate positive action to mitigate climate change but at the expense of making authoritarians more intolerant and punitive.
"How dare you?" - The Normative Challenge Posed by Fridays for Future , 2022, Viktoria Spaiser, Nicole Nisbett and Cristina Stefan, PLoS Climate, 1(10), e0000053.
Meeting the Paris Agreement will require unprecedented social change that goes hand in hand with technological and economic innovations. Research suggests that normative change, the change in what is perceived as normal or morally acceptable, can drive wider large-scale social change, i.e., change in legislation, policy, and behaviour. Normative change often starts with a normative challenge, i.e., practices considered normal, come to be seen as morally repugnant. In this paper we explore the normative challenge posed by Fridays for Future, analysing computationally a large data set of tweets in the context of this protest movement to understand the normative framework that challenges business as usual. We show that Friday for Future’s normative framework makes the shared, unjust casualty experience of young people because of the unmitigated climate crisis accessible to the public. The victims are now in spatial, temporal, and social proximity, they are our children and grandchildren, and this makes the normative challenge of the status quo (continuation of fossil-fuel based economy) so potent. The normative framework references human rights and duty of care when establishing an anti-fossil-fuel norm and prescribes solidarity with climate victims in the Global South, activism and seeking solutions that are based in science.
Meeting the Paris Agreement will require unprecedented social change that goes hand in hand with technological and economic innovations. Research suggests that normative change, the change in what is perceived as normal or morally acceptable, can drive wider large-scale social change, i.e., change in legislation, policy, and behaviour. Normative change often starts with a normative challenge, i.e., practices considered normal, come to be seen as morally repugnant. In this paper we explore the normative challenge posed by Fridays for Future, analysing computationally a large data set of tweets in the context of this protest movement to understand the normative framework that challenges business as usual. We show that Friday for Future’s normative framework makes the shared, unjust casualty experience of young people because of the unmitigated climate crisis accessible to the public. The victims are now in spatial, temporal, and social proximity, they are our children and grandchildren, and this makes the normative challenge of the status quo (continuation of fossil-fuel based economy) so potent. The normative framework references human rights and duty of care when establishing an anti-fossil-fuel norm and prescribes solidarity with climate victims in the Global South, activism and seeking solutions that are based in science.
Consumption-based accounting of CO2 emissions in the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda, 2019,
Viktoria Spaiser, Kate Scott, Anne Owen and Robert Holland, International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology, 26(4), 282-289.
In 2017 the paper ‘The Sustainable Development Oxymoron: Quantifying and Modelling the Incompatibility of Sustainable Development Goals’ was published, showing that there is a conflict between socio-economic development goals and ecological sustainability goals using cross-country time-series data. The authors looked at production-based CO2 emissions to measure and model the 13th SDG goal addressing climate change. Their models showed that production-based CO2 emissions were stalling or even decreasing in rich countries, which suggests that other countries are also likely to see stalling and decrease in their CO2 emissions once they become rich. However, this conclusion can be challenged when accounting for consumption-based CO2 emissions rather than production-based CO2 emissions. In this follow-up paper, we re-run some of the analyses performed in the original paper making use of consumption-based CO2 emissions. The analysis confirms the inherent SDG conflict between socio-economic and ecological SDGs. But, this new analysis demonstrates that from a consumption perspective the trend of stalling or decreasing CO2 emissions is reversed, with natural depletion costs being exported to poorer countries. Despite this new perspective on CO2 emissions, the conflict between SDG goals can still be avoided by making investments in public health, education and renewable energy, as suggested in the original paper.
Viktoria Spaiser, Kate Scott, Anne Owen and Robert Holland, International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology, 26(4), 282-289.
In 2017 the paper ‘The Sustainable Development Oxymoron: Quantifying and Modelling the Incompatibility of Sustainable Development Goals’ was published, showing that there is a conflict between socio-economic development goals and ecological sustainability goals using cross-country time-series data. The authors looked at production-based CO2 emissions to measure and model the 13th SDG goal addressing climate change. Their models showed that production-based CO2 emissions were stalling or even decreasing in rich countries, which suggests that other countries are also likely to see stalling and decrease in their CO2 emissions once they become rich. However, this conclusion can be challenged when accounting for consumption-based CO2 emissions rather than production-based CO2 emissions. In this follow-up paper, we re-run some of the analyses performed in the original paper making use of consumption-based CO2 emissions. The analysis confirms the inherent SDG conflict between socio-economic and ecological SDGs. But, this new analysis demonstrates that from a consumption perspective the trend of stalling or decreasing CO2 emissions is reversed, with natural depletion costs being exported to poorer countries. Despite this new perspective on CO2 emissions, the conflict between SDG goals can still be avoided by making investments in public health, education and renewable energy, as suggested in the original paper.
Choice modelling with Gaussian processes in the social sciences: A case study of neighbourhood choice in Stockholm, 2018, Richard P. Mann, Viktoria Spaiser, Lina Hedmann and David J.T. Sumpter, PLoS ONE, 13(11), e0206687.
We present a non-parametric extension of the conditional logit model, using Gaussian process priors. The conditional logit model is used in quantitative social science for inferring interaction effects between personal features and choice characteristics from observations of individual multinomial decisions, such as where to live, which car to buy or which school to choose. The classic, parametric model presupposes a latent utility function that is a linear combination of choice characteristics and their interactions with personal features. This imposes strong and unrealistic constraints on the form of individuals’ preferences. Extensions using non-linear basis functions derived from the original features can ameliorate this problem but at the cost of high model complexity and increased reliance on the user in model specification. In this paper we develop a non-parametric conditional logit model based on Gaussian process logit models. We demonstrate its application on housing choice data from over 50,000 moving households from the Stockholm area over a two year period to reveal complex homophilic patterns in income, ethnicity and parental status.
We present a non-parametric extension of the conditional logit model, using Gaussian process priors. The conditional logit model is used in quantitative social science for inferring interaction effects between personal features and choice characteristics from observations of individual multinomial decisions, such as where to live, which car to buy or which school to choose. The classic, parametric model presupposes a latent utility function that is a linear combination of choice characteristics and their interactions with personal features. This imposes strong and unrealistic constraints on the form of individuals’ preferences. Extensions using non-linear basis functions derived from the original features can ameliorate this problem but at the cost of high model complexity and increased reliance on the user in model specification. In this paper we develop a non-parametric conditional logit model based on Gaussian process logit models. We demonstrate its application on housing choice data from over 50,000 moving households from the Stockholm area over a two year period to reveal complex homophilic patterns in income, ethnicity and parental status.
Advancing sustainability: using smartphones to study environmental behavior in a field-experimental setup, 2018, Viktoria Spaiser, Davide Luzzatti and Aliki Gregoriou, Data Science. Methods, Infrastructure, and Applications, online first publication.
Ecological sustainability is the defining challenge of our time. Here we suggest a methodological approach that could help to investigate how environmental behavior (transport behavior, energy consumption, food consumption, goods consumption, wasting) dilemmas can be overcome on an individual level in real life by using smartphones to collect daily behavioral data in a field-experimental setup. Previous related studies are reviewed and we discuss how the boundaries of what can be done with smartphones for data collection and experimental purposes can be pushed further to allow for complex behavioral studies. Results from a pilot study are presented to discuss the feasibility and potential of this approach. The pilot shows that studying social dilemma behavior via smartphones is feasible and has potential value as a behavioral intervention tool.
Ecological sustainability is the defining challenge of our time. Here we suggest a methodological approach that could help to investigate how environmental behavior (transport behavior, energy consumption, food consumption, goods consumption, wasting) dilemmas can be overcome on an individual level in real life by using smartphones to collect daily behavioral data in a field-experimental setup. Previous related studies are reviewed and we discuss how the boundaries of what can be done with smartphones for data collection and experimental purposes can be pushed further to allow for complex behavioral studies. Results from a pilot study are presented to discuss the feasibility and potential of this approach. The pilot shows that studying social dilemma behavior via smartphones is feasible and has potential value as a behavioral intervention tool.
Polarized Ukraine 2014: opinion and territorial split demonstrated with the bounded confidence XY model, parametrized by Twitter data, 2018, Maksym Romenskyy, Viktoria Spaiser, Thomas Ihle and Vladimir Lobaskin. Royal Society Open Science, 5,171935.
Multiple countries have recently experienced extreme political polarization, which, in some cases, led to escalation of hate crime, violence and political instability. Besides the much discussed presidential elections in the USA and France, Britain's Brexit vote and Turkish constitutional referendum showed signs of extreme polarization. Among the countries affected, Ukraine faced some of the gravest consequences. In an attempt to understand the mechanisms of these phenomena, we here combine social media analysis with agent-based modelling of opinion dynamics, targeting Ukraine's crisis of 2014. We use Twitter data to quantify changes in the opinion divide and parametrize an extended bounded confidence XY model, which provides a spatio-temporal description of the polarization dynamics. We demonstrate that the level of emotional intensity is a major driving force for polarization that can lead to a spontaneous onset of collective behaviour at a certain degree of homophily and conformity. We find that the critical level of emotional intensity corresponds to a polarization transition, marked by a sudden increase in the degree of involvement and in the opinion bimodality.
Multiple countries have recently experienced extreme political polarization, which, in some cases, led to escalation of hate crime, violence and political instability. Besides the much discussed presidential elections in the USA and France, Britain's Brexit vote and Turkish constitutional referendum showed signs of extreme polarization. Among the countries affected, Ukraine faced some of the gravest consequences. In an attempt to understand the mechanisms of these phenomena, we here combine social media analysis with agent-based modelling of opinion dynamics, targeting Ukraine's crisis of 2014. We use Twitter data to quantify changes in the opinion divide and parametrize an extended bounded confidence XY model, which provides a spatio-temporal description of the polarization dynamics. We demonstrate that the level of emotional intensity is a major driving force for polarization that can lead to a spontaneous onset of collective behaviour at a certain degree of homophily and conformity. We find that the critical level of emotional intensity corresponds to a polarization transition, marked by a sudden increase in the degree of involvement and in the opinion bimodality.
Identifying Complex Dynamics in Social Systems: A New Methodological Approach Applied to Study School Segregation, 2018, Viktoria Spaiser, Peter Hedström, Shyam Ranganathan, Kim Jansson, Monica K. Nordvik and David J.T. Sumpter. Sociological Methods & Research, 47(2), 103-135.
It is widely recognized that segregation processes are often the result of complex nonlinear dynamics. Empirical analyses of complex dynamics are however rare, because there is a lack of appropriate empirical modeling techniques that are capable of capturing complex patterns and nonlinearities. At the same time, we know that many social phenomena display nonlinearities. In this article, we introduce a new modeling tool in order to partly fill this void in the literature. Using data of all secondary schools in Stockholm county during the years 1990 to 2002, we demonstrate how the methodology can be applied to identify complex dynamic patterns like tipping points and multiple phase transitions with respect to segregation. We establish critical thresholds in schools’ ethnic compositions, in general, and in relation to various factors such as school quality and parents’ income, at which the schools are likely to tip and become increasingly segregated.
It is widely recognized that segregation processes are often the result of complex nonlinear dynamics. Empirical analyses of complex dynamics are however rare, because there is a lack of appropriate empirical modeling techniques that are capable of capturing complex patterns and nonlinearities. At the same time, we know that many social phenomena display nonlinearities. In this article, we introduce a new modeling tool in order to partly fill this void in the literature. Using data of all secondary schools in Stockholm county during the years 1990 to 2002, we demonstrate how the methodology can be applied to identify complex dynamic patterns like tipping points and multiple phase transitions with respect to segregation. We establish critical thresholds in schools’ ethnic compositions, in general, and in relation to various factors such as school quality and parents’ income, at which the schools are likely to tip and become increasingly segregated.
Communication Power Struggles on Social Media: A Case Study of the 2011-12 Russian Protests.
2017, Viktoria Spaiser, Thomas Chadefaux, Karsten Donnay, Fabian Russmann and Dirk Helbing.
Journal of Information Technology & Politics 14(2), 132-153.
In 2011-2012 Russia experienced a wave of mass protests surrounding the Duma and presidential elections. The protests, however, faded shortly after the second election. We study the Russian political discourse on Twitter during this period and the main actors involved: the pro-government camp, the opposition and the general public. We analyse around 700.000 Twitter messages and investigate the social networks of the most active Twitter users. Our analysis shows that pro-government users employed a variety of communication strategies to shift the political discourse and marginalise oppositional voices on Twitter. This demonstrates how authorities can disempower regime critics and successfully manipulate public opinion on social media.
2017, Viktoria Spaiser, Thomas Chadefaux, Karsten Donnay, Fabian Russmann and Dirk Helbing.
Journal of Information Technology & Politics 14(2), 132-153.
In 2011-2012 Russia experienced a wave of mass protests surrounding the Duma and presidential elections. The protests, however, faded shortly after the second election. We study the Russian political discourse on Twitter during this period and the main actors involved: the pro-government camp, the opposition and the general public. We analyse around 700.000 Twitter messages and investigate the social networks of the most active Twitter users. Our analysis shows that pro-government users employed a variety of communication strategies to shift the political discourse and marginalise oppositional voices on Twitter. This demonstrates how authorities can disempower regime critics and successfully manipulate public opinion on social media.
The Sustainable Development Oxymoron: Quantifying and Modelling the Incompatibility of Sustainable Development Goals. 2017, Viktoria Spaiser, Shyam Ranganathan, Ranjula Bali Swain and David J.T. Sumpter. International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 24(6), 457-470.
In 2015, the UN adopted a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to eradicate poverty, establish socioeconomic inclusion and protect the environment. Critical voices such as the International Council for Science (ICSU), however, have expressed concerns about the potential incompatibility of the SDGs, specifically the incompatibility of socio-economic development and environmental sustainability. In this paper, we test, quantify and model the alleged inconsistency of SDGs. Our analyses show which SDGs are consistent and which are conflicting. We measure the extent of inconsistency and conclude that the SDG agenda will fail as a whole if we continue with business as usual. We further explore the nature of the inconsistencies using dynamical systems models, which reveal that the focus on economic growth and consumption as a means for development underlies the inconsistency. Our models also show that there are factors which can contribute to development (health programmes, government investment in education) on the one hand and ecological sustainability (renewable energy) on the other, without triggering the conflict between incompatible SDGs.