As populations contend with the climate crisis, it has become more pressing for individuals to adopt attitudes, behaviours, and social engagement patterns that align with an increasingly carbon-constrained world. The concept of “carbon capability” reflects this approach, as its research domains not only gauge personal consumption-based emissions (i.e. energy, transport, food, and shopping) but also how the broader public-sphere roles that individuals embrace (i.e. influence and citizenship) can manifest low-carbon tendencies. However, is that willingness to act unconditional and irrespective of place, or rather contingent on how invested people are on their immediate localities?

In this talk, we apply this concept of “place attachment” in a Global South context and take as our focus the residents of metropolitan Jakarta, which constitutes a novel demographic focus yet to be explored in past studies on carbon capability. We specifically explore this relationship between place attachment and carbon capability, hypothesising a positive correlation between the two variables. The ongoing data collection process will be discussed, along with planned statistical analyses and expected findings.

This research project is funded by the Indonesia Endowment Fund for Education (LPDP) and is part of an MSc dissertation supervised by Dr Sam Hampton.