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

Madalina Vlasceanu; Kimberly C Doell; Joseph B Bak-Coleman; Boryana Todorova; Michael M Berkebile-Weinberg; Samantha J Grayson; Yash Patel; Danielle Goldwert; Yifei Pei; Alek  Chakroff; Ekaterina Pronizius; See full text of article for complete list of authors; Tak Yan Leung

doi:10.1126/sciadv.adj5778

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

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

Madalina Vlasceanu, Kimberly C Doell, Joseph B Bak-Coleman, Boryana Todorova, Michael M Berkebile-Weinberg, Samantha J Grayson, Yash Patel, Danielle Goldwert, Yifei Pei, Alek Chakroff, …

Science Advances, Vol.10(6), pp.1-19

2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adj5778

PMCID: PMC10849597

PMID: 38324680

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Abstract

climate change

behavioral science

climate mitigation

beliefs

policy support

information sharing

tree-planting

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.

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Title: Addressing climate change with behavioral science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countries
Authors: Madalina Vlasceanu (Corresponding Author) - New York University
Kimberly C Doell (Corresponding Author) - New York University
Joseph B Bak-Coleman (Author) - Columbia University
Boryana Todorova - Medical University of Vienna
Michael M Berkebile-Weinberg (Author) - New York University
Samantha J Grayson - Stanford University
Yash Patel - New York University
Danielle Goldwert - New York University
Yifei Pei - New York University
Alek Chakroff
Ekaterina Pronizius (Author) - University of Vienna
See full text of article for complete list of authors (Author)
Tak Yan Leung - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative Industries
Publication details: Science Advances, Vol.10(6), pp.1-19
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Date published: 2024
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adj5778
ISSN: 2375-2548
PMID: 38324680; PMC10849597
Copyright note: Copyright © 2024 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY).
Data Availability: The data can be downloaded from https://zenodo.org/records/10345806. All data and code can also be found on GitHub (https://github.com/josephbb/ManyLabsClimate and https://github.com/mvlasceanu/ClimateTournament).
Organisation Unit: School of Business and Creative Industries
Language: English
Record Identifier: 991006997802621
Output Type: Journal article

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