Revealing Cross-National Differences and Similarities in Relations between Human Values and Climate Policy Support by Mixture Multigroup SEM: A New Tool for Comparative Research

With growing availability of large-scale international surveys, social scientists are increasingly interested in comparing relations among latent variables, such as values and attitudes, across countries using Multigroup and Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling. However, these two methods either entail numerous pairwise comparisons or overemphasize the differences between groups, neglecting shared similarities. Mixture Multigroup Structural Equation Modeling (MMG-SEM) has recently been proposed as a novel alternative to identify clusters of groups with similar structural relations while accounting for measurement invariance and non-invariance. Despite its potential, practical guide for applying MMG-SEM to cross-national survey data remains limited. This study provides a step-by-step tutorial to address this gap, using the European Social Survey (ESS) Round 8 data to analyze climate change attitudes. Our results reveal cross-national differences and similarities in how human values influence climate policy support, and how these relations are mediated by climate change beliefs across 23 countries. The clustering patterns are primarily driven by the strength of self-transcendence and conservation effects, whereas self-enhancement effects remain weak and contribute little to distinguish between countries. In addition, the clustering results organize the countries into four types: value-driven but belief-cautious skeptics, value-driven and belief-amplifying advocates, paradoxical value-pathway actors, and value-detached pragmatists.