Addressing climate change with behavioral science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countriesShow others and affiliations
Number of Authors: 2582024 (English)In: Science Advances, E-ISSN 2375-2548, Vol. 10, no 6Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
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.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2024. Vol. 10, no 6
National Category
Economics Psychology (excluding Applied Psychology) Peace and Conflict Studies Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-201090DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adj5778ISI: 001190871400011PubMedID: 38324680Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85184670116OAI: oai:DiVA.org:liu-201090DiVA, id: diva2:1839332
Note
Funding Agencies|Google Jigsaw grant; Swiss National Science Foundation [P400PS_190997]; Dutch Research Council [7934]; John Templeton Foundation [61378]; National council for Scientific and technological development grant; Swiss Federal Office of energy through the energy, economy, and Society program; Christ church college Research centre grant [Si/502093- 01]; National Research Foundation of Korea [NRF- 2020S1A3A2A02097375]; Kieskompas-election compass; National Agency of Research and Development; National Doctoral Scholarship [24210087]; Dutch Science Foundation (NWO) [Vi.Veni.201S.075]; Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) [453- 15- 005]; Foundation for Science and technology-Fct (Portuguese Ministry of Science, technology and higher education) [UidB/05380/2020]; Slovak Research and development Agency (APVV) [APVV- 21- 0114]; James Mcdonnell Foundation; Swedish Research council [2018- 01755]; Russian Federation Government [075- 15- 2021- 611]
2024-02-202024-02-202025-02-20Bibliographically approved