Project UPSTArt: Understanding Perceptions on Sustainability Transitions - from empirical research to participative Art-based approaches

The UPSTArt project, led by Camille Belmin with Adriano Vinca assisting in conceptualization and organization, explores citizens' perceptions of climate change and sustainability transitions through a unique blend of empirical research and art-based approaches. The first phase focuses on data collection and analysis to better understand public views on these topics, while the second phase fosters collaboration between IIASA scientists and art students. This interdisciplinary effort will culminate in an artistic publication that creatively reflects on scientific studies conducted at IIASA. By integrating empirical research with artistic expression, the project aims to bridge the gap between data-driven insights and public engagement, offering a deeper, more accessible perspective on sustainability transitions.

Empirical Analysis of Sustainability Perceptions

The project’s empirical analysis focuses on understanding trade-offs and synergies in sustainability transitions. Key activities include:

Pooled Dataset Construction: The first step of the project was to compile a pooled dataset, integrating data from the SPES project (WP9) "Understanding Synergies and Trade-Offs for a Just Transition", from 36 Eurobarometer surveys, covering 1,127,011 respondents across 41 European countries from 2003 to 2023. This dataset includes information on age, gender, education level, and the top two issues respondents consider priorities for their country (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Policy priorities of European citizens over time using the pooled dataset from 36 Eurobarometer surveys.

Harmonization of Sub-national Boundaries: The second step of the project was to harmonize the sub-national region boundaries of the pooled dataset to NUTS2 level. This step is currently being carried out in collaboration with Jonas Peisker, by reusing and adapting some undocumented code from a previous project. As the harmonization process is a time consuming task, we have so far harmonized 70% of the regions represented in our dataset (Figure 2) and will complete the harmonization as a next step. Once this is done, we will merge the pooled dataset with the ARDECO data at the NUTS 2 level and then conduct statistical analysis to understand the interdependencies between climate extremes, environmental concerns, economic shocks and economic concerns.

Figure 2: Map of harmonized NUTS2 regions in the dataset as of February 2025.

Art-based approach

The arts-based approach involves five artists, a graphic designer, and workshops to bridge scientific and artistic perspectives on climate change. The project explores sensory engagement with climate issues and contrasts scientific scenario-building with artistic speculation.