Declining Climate Concern 

A recent study conducted by Ipsos I&O reveals a notable shift among Dutch youth, who now perceive climate change as less urgent than before. Concern about climate change has dropped to numbers not seen since 2019. The percentage of Dutch youth (ages 18-24) who want more action against climate change decreased from 64% in 2023 to 54% today. While still above half, this marks a significant shift despite the unchanged reality that climate change continues to pose an existential threat whose impacts are already being felt worldwide. How, then, do we understand this apparent contradiction? And what can this shift reveal about the value of attention in our hyperconnected and often overwhelming age?

Attention as a scarce resource

The concept of the Attention Economy offers valuable insight into this trend. As Herbert Simon argued when he first coined the term in 1971, “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”  In our digital age, we face an unprecedented flood of information, media, and crises constantly at our fingertips. We cannot consume and process all of it. Attention has become a scarce and valuable resource. A commodity split across competing demands. 

While the attention economy is often discussed in relation to social media platforms competing for users with addictive algorithms, it also plays a significant role in shaping public engagement with social and political issues. In a world where attention operates as a finite resource, concern is also finite. This framework helps us understand why people may shift their focus from climate change to other pressing issues.

Redirected Attention in the Netherlands

As climate concerns begin to diminish, a recent Trouw survey reveals what has captured Dutch attention instead. The top three concerns identified are housing shortages (82%), societal polarization (78%), and digital insecurity (including cybercrime and phishing) (73%). These all share a crucial commonality: they represent immediate, tangible impacts that shape present daily life. 

Climate change ranked only seventh, with 63% expressing concern. This prioritization reflects how attention allocation functions in the context of information and crisis overload. Ipsos I&O  found that the decreased relevance of climate change stemmed from perceptions of it as an “abstract idea.” Issues perceived as abstract and distant, given limited pools of concern, struggle to maintain attention amidst competition with other issues perceived as immediate and tangible. Survey participants remarked that, with the weight of their daily lives — studying, working, and just getting by —they lack the time to think and worry about climate change. They reallocate their cognitive resources towards problems they feel more concretely and immediately. The attention economy creates a hierarchy of concern that privileges the immediate and tangible over the abstract and distant.

This shift can also be observed outside the Netherlands. A study from King’s College London, which surveyed 21,000 people across 17 European countries, found that public support for policies aimed at combating climate change is minimized when there are other, more immediate crises. The study attributes this to the fact that “public attention is a scarce resource.” This redirection of attention in the face of constant competition poses a significant challenge, not only to climate change efforts but also to all social and political issues that require sustained engagement. Every important issue now competes in an overcrowded attention marketplace. Battling not only other urgent causes but the relentless stream of media and information that fills our daily feeds, a war for access to the finite attention pool necessary to drive meaningful change. 

Navigating the Attention Economy 

Concern over climate change remains above 50% in the Netherlands; people continue to pay attention to, care about, and alter their behavior around environmental issues. Nonetheless, this shift provides valuable insight into attention and focus in our increasingly hyperconnected and overloaded world.  As Chris Hayes argues, “Every single aspect of human life across the broadest categories of human organization is being reoriented around the pursuit of attention. It is now the defining resource of our age.” 

This reality demands more intentional choices about where we direct our focus. Recognizing attention as a finite resource gives us a new lens for understanding why some issues dominate public discourse while others fade, regardless of their importance. When public attention and concern are both finite and fiercely contested, how will your company ensure that its communication and engagement on its most vital issues—especially those that feel abstract or long-term, like sustainability—not only break through the noise of our digital age, but truly connect and resonate authentically with your audience?