Addressing climate change with behavioral science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countries
journal contribution
posted on 2024-09-18, 00:08 authored by 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, Karlijn L van den Broek, Denisa Vlasceanu, Sara Constantino, Michael J Morais, Philipp Schumann, Steve Rathje, Ke Fang, Salvatore Maria Aglioti, Mark Alfano, Andy J Alvarado-Yepez, Angélica Andersen, Frederik Anseel, Matthew AJ Apps, Chillar Asadli, Fonda Jane Awuor, Flavio Azevedo, Piero Basaglia, Jocelyn J Bélanger, Sebastian Berger, Paul Bertin, Michał Białek, Olga Bialobrzeska, Michelle Blaya-Burgo, Daniëlle NM Bleize, Simen Bø, Lea Boecker, Paulo S Boggio, Sylvie Borau, Björn Bos, Ayoub Bouguettaya, Markus Brauer, Cameron Brick, Tymofii Brik, Roman Briker, Tobias Brosch, Ondrej Buchel, Daniel Buonauro, Radhika Butalia, Héctor Carvacho, Sarah AE Chamberlain, Hang-Yee Chan, Dawn Chow, Dongil Chung, Luca Cian, Noa Cohen-Eick, Luis Sebastian Contreras-Huerta, Davide Contu, Vladimir Cristea, Jo Cutler, Silvana D'Ottone, Jonas De Keersmaecker, Sarah Delcourt, Sylvain Delouvée, Kathi Diel, Benjamin D Douglas, Moritz A Drupp, Shreya Dubey, Jānis Ekmanis, Christian T Elbaek, Mahmoud Elsherif, Iris M Engelhard, Yannik A Escher, Tom W Etienne, Laura Farage, Ana Rita Farias, Stefan Feuerriegel, Andrej Findor, Lucia Freira, Malte Friese, Neil Philip Gains, Albina Gallyamova, Sandra J Geiger, Oliver Genschow, Biljana Gjoneska, Theofilos Gkinopoulos, Beth Goldberg, Amit Goldenberg, Sarah Gradidge, Simone Grassini, Kurt Gray, Sonja Grelle, Siobhán M Griffin, Lusine Grigoryan, Ani Grigoryan, Dmitry Grigoryev, June Gruber, Johnrev Guilaran, Britt Hadar, Ulf JJ Hahnel, Eran Halperin, Annelie J Harvey, Christian AP Haugestad, Aleksandra M Herman, Hal E Hershfield, Toshiyuki Himichi, Donald W Hine, Wilhelm Hofmann, Lauren Howe, Enma T Huaman-Chulluncuy, Guanxiong Huang, Tatsunori Ishii, Ayahito Ito, Fanli Jia, John T Jost, Veljko Jovanović, Dominika Jurgiel, Ondřej Kácha, Reeta Kankaanpää, Jaroslaw Kantorowicz, Elena Kantorowicz-Reznichenko, Keren Kaplan Mintz, Ilker Kaya, Ozgur Kaya, Narine Khachatryan, Anna Klas, Colin Klein, Christian A Klöckner, Lina Koppel, Alexandra I Kosachenko, Emily J Kothe, Ruth Krebs, Amy R Krosch, Andre PM Krouwel, Yara Kyrychenko, Maria Lagomarsino, Claus Lamm, Florian Lange, Julia Lee Cunningham, Jeffrey Lees, Tak Yan Leung, Neil Levy, Patricia L Lockwood, Chiara Longoni, Alberto López Ortega, David D Loschelder, Jackson G Lu, Yu Luo, Joseph Luomba, Annika E Lutz, Johann M Majer, Ezra Markowitz, Abigail A Marsh, Karen Louise Mascarenhas, Bwambale Mbilingi, Winfred Mbungu, Cillian McHugh, Marijn HC Meijers, Hugo Mercier, Fenant Laurent Mhagama, Katerina Michalakis, Nace Mikus, Sarah Milliron, Panagiotis Mitkidis, Fredy S Monge-Rodríguez, Youri L Mora, David Moreau, Kosuke Motoki, Manuel Moyano, Mathilde Mus, Joaquin Navajas, Tam Luong Nguyen, Dung Minh Nguyen, Trieu Nguyen, Laura Niemi, Sari RR Nijssen, Gustav Nilsonne, Jonas P Nitschke, Laila Nockur, Ritah Okura, Sezin Öner, Asil Ali Özdoğru, Helena Palumbo, Costas Panagopoulos, Maria Serena Panasiti, Philip Pärnamets, Mariola Paruzel-Czachura, Yuri G Pavlov, César Payán-Gómez, Adam R Pearson, Leonor Pereira da Costa, Hannes M Petrowsky, Stefan Pfattheicher, Nhat Tan Pham, Vladimir Ponizovskiy, Clara Pretus, Gabriel G Rêgo, Ritsaart Reimann, Shawn A Rhoads, Julian Riano-Moreno, Isabell Richter, Jan Philipp Röer, Jahred Rosa-Sullivan, Robert M Ross, Anandita Sabherwal, Toshiki Saito, Oriane Sarrasin, Nicolas Say, Katharina Schmid, Michael T Schmitt, Philipp Schoenegger, Christin Scholz, Mariah G Schug, Stefan Schulreich, Ganga Shreedhar, Eric Shuman, Smadar Sivan, Hallgeir Sjåstad, Meikel Soliman, Katia Soud, Tobia Spampatti, Gregg Sparkman, Ognen Spasovski, Samantha K Stanley, Jessica A Stern, Noel Strahm, Yasushi Suko, Sunhae Sul, Stylianos Syropoulos, Neil C Taylor, Elisa Tedaldi, Gustav Tinghög, Luu Duc Toan Huynh, Giovanni Antonio Travaglino, Manos Tsakiris, İlayda Tüter, Michael Tyrala, Özden Melis Uluğ, Arkadiusz Urbanek, Danila Valko, Sander van der Linden, Kevin van Schie, Aart van Stekelenburg, Edmunds Vanags, Daniel Västfjäll, Stepan Vesely, Jáchym Vintr, Marek Vranka, Patrick Otuo Wanguche, Robb Willer, Adrian Dominik Wojcik, Rachel Xu, Anjali YadavAnjali Yadav, Magdalena Zawisza, Xian Zhao, Jiaying Zhao, Dawid Żuk, Jay J Van BavelEffectively 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.
