Vol.:(0123456789) Environment, Development and Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-019-00496-0 1 3 Situational factors driving climate change mitigation behaviors: the key role of pro‑environmental family Victor Corral‑Verdugo 1  · Marc Yancy Lucas 1  · César Tapia‑Fonllem 1  · Anais Ortiz‑Valdez 1 Received: 27 August 2018 / Accepted: 12 October 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 Abstract Climate change mitigation behaviors (CCMB) are actions required to decrease the green- house gas emissions responsible for anthropogenic climate change. The present study examines the infuence of social and physical situational factors on CCMB in a sample of two hundred individuals living in a Mexican city. Participants responded to a series of scales focused on assessing CCMB such as household thermic comfort, pro-environmental family orientation, and perceptions of the city’s pro-environmental public facilities, ser- vices, and community values. All of these situational factors were signifcantly interrelated, which suggests that they all afect CCMB. Yet, according to a structural model, the only factor that resulted in a signifcant (and more salient) direct infuence on CCMB was pro- environmental family orientation. A second structural model indicated that household ther- mic comfort, pro-environmental public facilities/services, and pro-environmental public values had an indirect efect on CCMB mediated by pro-environmental family orientation. Keywords Climate change · Mitigation behavior · Situational factors · Family · Structural models 1 Introduction Climate change (CC) constitutes the most urgent environmental problem humanity faces. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change operating under the auspices of the United Nations has estimated with more than 95% probability that human activ- ity is responsible for current warming of the planet. As such, the actions of individuals * Victor Corral-Verdugo victorcorral@sociales.uson.mx Marc Yancy Lucas yancy@lucascorraldesign.com César Tapia-Fonllem cesartapiaf@gmail.com Anais Ortiz-Valdez anais.ortizv@gmail.com 1 Department of Psychology, University of Sonora, Hermosillo, Mexico