Behavioural change assessment in 39 cities of the EU Mission aiming at climate-neutral and smart cities

Large-scale socio-technical transformations in cities require addressing behavioural change among citizens as a vital part of their climate transition pathways. Traditional, siloed, top-down methods, which focused mainly on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through technological innovation, are increasingly seen as insufficient to address the complexities of transitioning to climate neutrality. In response, cities are adopting systemic approaches that integrate bottom-up strategies such as social innovation to reshape and strengthen climate action plans, fostering deep sustainability and enabling climate-neutral urban ecosystems that drive lasting and meaningful change. Within a systemic perspective, integrating behavioural insights (BI) strategically into policy design is essential for realistically achieving climate-neutral objectives. Although behavioural change at the individual level has been extensively examined across disciplines, transdisciplinary literature provides limited insights into its role in systemic urban transformations. Despite a growing consensus among policymakers, urban transition teams, and scholars on the necessity of integrating behavioural change into climate action research, little empirical evidence exists on how it can be operationalised in practice. To address this gap, this study examines how cities plan to monitor and evaluate the impacts of their climate actions on citizens’ behaviour change. Focusing on the European Union’s mission of achieving 100 climate-neutral and smart cities by 2030, this study examines the selection of non-GHG indicators by 39 cities involved in the NetZeroCities project. Using an adaptation of the Transtheoretical Model of Behaviour Change, cities’ selections of indicators are categorised according to the stages of behavioural change they target. The findings provide evidence of cities’ perceived importance of behavioural change actions and assessment within systemic climate transitions and highlight the stages prioritised by European cities. The study also advances transdisciplinary discourse on systemic climate transitions, presenting cities’ choices in terms of behavioural change assessment by emission domain, and by geographic region, thus offering insights on the behavioural change as a lever of climate interventions for policymakers and public administrations to support comprehensive urban planning strategies that effectively embed human behaviour.