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Addressing climate change with behavioral science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countries

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posted on 2024-02-09, 09:44 authored by Madalina Vlasceanu, Kimberly C. Doell, Joseph B. Bak-Coleman, Annelie HarveyAnnelie Harvey, Magdalena ZawiszaMagdalena Zawisza, Sarah GradidgeSarah Gradidge, et al.

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions’ effectiveness was small, largely limited to nonclimate skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened mostly by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future-generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior—several interventions even reduced tree planting. Last, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people’s initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors.

History

Refereed

  • Yes

Volume

10

Issue number

6

Publication title

Science Advances

ISSN

2375-2548

Publisher

American Association for the Advancement of Science

File version

  • Published version

Affiliated with

  • School of Psychology and Sport Science Outputs