Government social researchers are a group of civil servants who have been overlooked in the existing literature on policy-making in the UK. Their role is particularly intriguing in policy areas relating to environment, food, and energy policy. In these domains, researchers in Science and Technology Studies have argued that policy-makers hold flawed assumptions about citizens’ views and likely actions, contributing to an image of UK policy institutions as overly technocratic and resistant to change. In this context, this thesis aims to understand changes in social research capacity and influence in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) between 2001 and 2015. Based on an analysis of more than 200 documents and 46 interviews with civil servants and external researchers, this thesis illuminates the growth of social research capacity and influence within DEFRA and DECC, since these departments were formed in 2001 and 2008 respectively. The first two empirical chapters (4 & 5) explain how social research capacity expanded within specific institutional, political, and epistemic contexts, through changes in how actors perceived the meanings, roles, and value of social research. It is shown that, contrary to what has been implied by recent literature, DEFRA and DECC are epistemically diverse and dynamic: they house multiple and conflicting epistemic perspectives which are reshaped over time. Moreover, social researchers are committed to performing a ‘challenge function’, whereby they question assumptions, values, and the framing of ideas. Indeed, such challenging has been important in shaping the capacity for social research within these departments. Social researchers’ ‘challenge function’ has also contributed to their gaining greater influence in DEFRA and DECC. Considering policy areas from each department in depth, Chapters 6 & 7 show that social researchers have enabled both ‘single-loop’ and ‘double-loop’ learning. As a result, in both departments social researchers have had some success in encouraging their colleagues to develop and test out policy ideas with the help of empirical research about citizens’ perspectives and everyday lives. While social researchers’ 'challenge function' is a significant policy learning mechanism, it has also been inhibited in various ways within these departments. The thesis concludes that their challenge function could be strengthened if social researchers gain greater representation in the senior civil service and more institutional recognition of their expert knowledge relating to a policy area (besides their skills). Moreover, better interdisciplinary collaboration is needed early on in policy development processes. Such changes have the potential to improve both the effectiveness and democratic legitimacy of policy-making within DEFRA and DECC.

Reports from the IPCC have been consistent in their findings: climate change is happening and human activity is the cause. The temperature of the earth’s climate has been steadily rising since the industrial revolution, with profoundly negative consequences for the natural environment. Britain is amongst the top 10 global contributors towards climate change, producing more CO2 per capita than China, and yet little is known about the relationship the British public have with the natural environment. Drawing upon DEFRA’s 2009 Survey of Public Attitudes and Behaviours Towards the Environment, a nationally representative sample of the UK, this study aims to (1) explore environmental attitudes in the DEFRA sample; (2) identify the types of environmental concern that exist in the UK and; (3) examine how environmental concern is associated with pro-environmental behaviours. The overall goal is to develop a better understanding this attitude-behaviour relationship. The thesis has 3 main findings. First, environmental concern is formed of three environmental attitudes: (a) a cognitive appraisal of plant and animal welfare (ecocentric attitude); (b) welfare of the human race (human-centric attitude); and (c) a prioritisation of the self, alongside dismissal of environmental problems (denial).Second, members of the British public can be assigned to one of four groups based on their environmental concern: Pro-environment, Neutral, Disengaged and Paradoxical (the latter 2 groups are apathetic towards environmental issues though in different ways).Third, when examining behaviour variation across these environmental concern groups, it was found, unsurprisingly, that membership of the pro- environmental group is strongly predictive of pro-environmental behaviour. What was surprising was that pro-environmental concern predicts a variety of behaviours, both easy and challenging (i.e. easy behaviour such as recycling household waste as well more challenging behaviour such as an increase use of public transportation over driving), whereas previous studies have typically found such behaviours to be unaffected by attitudes. Membership of the Neutral group also predicts pro-environmental behaviours, although this relationship is weaker and exists for fewer measures of behaviour. Disengaged and Paradoxical forms of concern are not significant predictors of behaviour. Upon examining the effect of socio-economic status (SES) on group membership and this attitude-behaviour relationship, it was found that SES does not moderate the attitude-behaviour relationship, but it does influence group membership. Respondents with higher SES were more likely to belong to neutral or pro-environment groups. After reviewing these findings, it is concluded that environmental attitudes do clearly predict behaviour, but a large portion of the UK population do not possess environmental attitudes strong enough to do so (the Disengaged and Paradoxical groups amount to 36% of the population). Future studies should focus on these apathetic groups in an attempt to understand them, determine effective methods of engagement and identify factors that increase the probability of members transitioning out of these groups.